01 · Operator
Who operates Shareaholic Bot (Steve)
- Company
- Shareaholic, Inc.
- Type
- Other bot
- Official docs
- shareaholic.com
02 · Behavior
What Shareaholic Bot (Steve) does
The bot collects titles, thumbnails and excerpts from pages. This powers Shareaholic's related content and distribution features. It caches heavily, so most URLs are visited only every few weeks.
03 · Impact
Why Shareaholic Bot (Steve) matters for your site
If you allow it
- Needed if you use Shareaholic on your site
- Low revisit rate
- Verifiable by reverse DNS
If you block it
- No benefit if you do not use Shareaholic
04 · Allow
How to allow Shareaholic Bot (Steve)
robots.txt
User-agent: Shareaholic
Allow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Shareaholic")
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: Shareaholic
Allow: /nginx
# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "Shareaholic") { return 403; }Apache
# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Shareaholic [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]05 · Block
How to block Shareaholic Bot (Steve)
Start with robots.txt. If Shareaholic Bot (Steve) keeps showing up in your logs, block it at your CDN or web server.
robots.txt
User-agent: Shareaholic
Disallow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Shareaholic")
Action: BlockWordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: Shareaholic
Disallow: /nginx
# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Shareaholic") {
return 403;
}Apache
# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Shareaholic [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>06 · User agents
User agents we see for Shareaholic Bot (Steve)
The user agent published by the operator:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Shareaholic/1.0; +http://www.shareaholic.com/steve)07 · Verification
Is it really Shareaholic Bot (Steve)?
Anyone can copy a user agent. A reverse DNS lookup of a real request resolves to shareaholic.com, and that hostname resolves back to the same IP.
FAQ
Questions about Shareaholic Bot (Steve)
What is Shareaholic's Steve bot?
It is Shareaholic's crawler. It collects titles, thumbnails and excerpts for its content discovery platform.
How can I verify the Shareaholic bot?
Run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP. It should resolve to shareaholic.com, and forward DNS should match the IP.
Last reviewed Oct 8, 2026