Charlotte Bot (SearchMe): Is It Still Active? How to Block

01 · Operator

Who operates Charlotte

Company: SearchMe (defunct)
Type: Search engine crawler

02 · Behavior

What Charlotte does

Its user agent pointed to SearchMe's support pages. SearchMe showed search results as page snapshots instead of text links. The service is gone, so current requests with this name are likely spoofed.

03 · Impact

Why Charlotte matters for your site

If you allow it

None today; it served a search engine that no longer exists

If you block it

Operator shut down in 2009
Current traffic is likely fake

04 · Allow

How to allow Charlotte

robots.txt

User-agent: Charlotte
Allow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Charlotte")
Action:     Skip › All Super Bot Fight Mode rules

# Also check Security › Bots: "Block AI bots" can block it regardless of robots.txt.

WordPress

# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: Charlotte
Allow: /

nginx

# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "Charlotte") { return 403; }

Apache

# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Charlotte [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]

05 · Block

How to block Charlotte

Start with robots.txt. If Charlotte keeps showing up in your logs, block it at your CDN or web server.

robots.txt

User-agent: Charlotte
Disallow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Charlotte")
Action:     Block

WordPress

# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: Charlotte
Disallow: /

nginx

# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Charlotte") {
    return 403;
}

Apache

# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Charlotte [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>

06 · User agents

User agents we see for Charlotte

The user agent published by the operator:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Charlotte/1.1; http://www.searchme.com/support/)

07 · Verification

Is it really Charlotte?

Charlotte’s operator publishes no IP ranges or hostnames, so requests cannot be verified. Treat the user agent as a claim, and watch your logs for unusual request rates.

FAQ

Questions about Charlotte

Is the Charlotte crawler still active?

No. Its operator SearchMe went offline in July 2009.

Should I block Charlotte?

Yes, it is safe to block. Traffic using this name today does not come from SearchMe.

What was SearchMe?

SearchMe was a visual search engine that displayed results as webpage screenshots you could flip through.

Charlotte was SearchMe (defunct)’s search engine crawler