SEO

Everything You Want to Know about AhrefsBot

AhrefsBot is Ahrefs' primary web crawler, continuously crawling the web to build and update its backlink database powering Ahrefs' SEO tools.

Last verified August 15, 2026 against Ahrefs's published crawler docs

Why it's crawling your site

AhrefsBot crawls your site (and pages linking to it) to keep Ahrefs' backlink index current; it strictly respects robots.txt, including crawl-delay.

How AhrefsBot views your website

AhrefsBot fetches raw page HTML (full page html) — it does not execute JavaScript. Content that only appears after client-side rendering is invisible to it.

See exactly what AhrefsBot sees on your site

Paste a URL for the rendered-vs-crawled diff, blocked resources, and the sections that never reach the bot.

Checker report screenshot

How to block AhrefsBot

Add the rule below to your site's robots.txt. Most crawlers, including AhrefsBot, check for changes within 24 hours.

User-agent: AhrefsBot
Disallow: /

Need the full walkthrough?

Partial blocks, per-directory rules, Cloudflare and server-level options, verification.