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AhrefsBot

Powers the database for both Ahrefs, a marketing intelligence platform, and Yep, an independent, privacy-focused search engine.
AhrefsBot
SEO

What is AhrefsBot?

AhrefsBot is an SEO crawler. Powers the database for both Ahrefs, a marketing intelligence platform, and Yep, an independent, privacy-focused search engine.

AhrefsBot is an operational bot rather than an AI crawler, so it does not directly affect whether you appear in AI answers. It still shows up in your logs, and bots like it help keep your site healthy and crawlable, which indirectly supports both SEO and AI visibility.

Like any automated client, AhrefsBot consumes crawl budget and appears in your server and CDN logs. Reviewing those logs alongside your robots.txt rules helps you keep automated traffic deliberate and easy to reason about.

Want to see every AI bot hitting your site? Promptwatch turns your server and CDN logs into a live view of AI crawler and agent traffic, so you can watch ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and others crawl your pages and connect those visits to real citations and revenue. Learn more in AI crawler logs.

See every AI bot hitting your site

Promptwatch turns your server and CDN logs into a live view of AI crawler and agent traffic. Watch ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and more crawl your pages in real time, see exactly what they take, and connect every crawl to the citations and revenue it drives.

How to handle AhrefsBot

Whether to allow AhrefsBot depends on whether you rely on the service behind it. Use a robots.txt rule to allow or disallow it.

To control AhrefsBot, add a rule for its user agent to your robots.txt:

User-agent: AhrefsBot
Disallow: /

AhrefsBot generally honors robots.txt directives.

Examples

  • A site owner spots AhrefsBot in access logs and confirms it against the operator's documented user agent.
  • An operations team allows AhrefsBot so the service it powers keeps working as expected.

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Frequently asked questions about AhrefsBot

Learn about AI visibility monitoring and how Promptwatch helps your brand succeed in AI search.

AhrefsBot is an SEO crawler; its operator is identified in its user-agent string and public documentation.

Be the brand AI recommends

Monitor your brand's visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. Get actionable insights and create content that gets cited by AI search engines.

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