Why can Linespider look like a normal browser?

One documented user agent includes browser engine and Chrome version tokens. It still contains `Linespider/1.1`, which is the part bot-detection rules should use.

Does Linespider respect robots.txt?

LINE's help center says yes and explains how to target the crawler. Cloudflare's record says otherwise, so confirm compliance on your own site rather than relying on either field alone.

Does Linespider train AI models?

No such purpose appears in the supplied record or LINE's crawler guidance. The stated use is web search for LINE services.

What happens if I block Linespider?

LINE should stop collecting the disallowed pages if its published policy is followed. Those pages may then be absent or stale in LINE service search results, with no documented effect on unrelated search engines.

Linespider: AI Crawler Guide & robots.txt

What is Linespider?

Linespider collects web data for search results inside LINE services. LINE manages the crawler and describes it as a way to give those services a wider set of searchable pages. This is indexing traffic, not a link-preview request triggered each time someone shares a URL.

Two user-agent forms appear in LINE's documentation. One is a conventional crawler string containing Linespider/1.1; the other includes AppleWebKit, Chrome, and Safari tokens while still naming Linespider/1.1. Log rules should match Linespider rather than treating every browser-shaped request as a person.

LINE's help page says the crawler reads robots.txt and applies records addressed to Linespider. That published policy is useful, but the supplied directory sources do not agree with it: the bot record leaves compliance unset and Cloudflare's bot directory marks it false. A webmaster can test the policy by disallowing a low-risk path and checking later requests.

Crawl access can affect whether a page is available to search features within LINE's services. The evidence does not identify Linespider as a model-training bot or connect it to generated AI answers. Blocking it should therefore be framed as opting out of LINE web search collection, not as a general AI-search decision.

Relevant for AI search

Is Linespider relevant for AI search?

Yes. Linespider collects pages for an AI product, so what it can crawl influences how AI systems describe your brand.

Linespider feeds a search index that also powers that engine's AI answer features and overviews. One crawl can serve a classic results page and a generated summary, so blocking it costs you both the rankings you would expect and a growing share of AI answers built on the same index.

How to handle Linespider

Publishers that want discovery through LINE services can permit ordinary articles and product pages while excluding account areas and URL spaces that create duplicate content. Keep private material behind authentication because robots.txt only communicates a crawl preference.

To opt the whole site out of Linespider collection, use:

User-agent: Linespider
Disallow: /

LINE explicitly says Linespider follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol. Because the directory's compliance fields conflict with that statement, inspect access logs after changing the file. A crawler-specific edge block is the fallback when requests continue or when access must stop immediately.

Examples

An analyst initially counts a browser-shaped Linespider request as human traffic, then fixes the filter to recognize the embedded crawler token.
A commerce site allows product detail pages but disallows an endless set of filter combinations, then checks that LINE's crawler stays out of those paths.

Frequently asked questions about Linespider

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

LINE operates it to collect web pages for search results provided through LINE services. The documentation does not describe it as a social preview bot.