Sosospider: Is Soso's Crawler Still Active?

01 · Operator

Who operates Sosospider

Company: Tencent
Type: Search engine crawler
Official docs: help.soso.com

02 · Behavior

What Sosospider does

Sosospider crawled web pages for the Soso search index. Soso now redirects to Sogou Search. Current requests with this user agent are unlikely to come from Tencent.

03 · Impact

Why Sosospider matters for your site

If you block it

The Soso search engine no longer exists
Current traffic with this name may be spoofed

04 · Allow

How to allow Sosospider

robots.txt

User-agent: Sosospider
Allow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Sosospider")
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: Sosospider
Allow: /

nginx

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

Apache

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

05 · Block

How to block Sosospider

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

robots.txt

User-agent: Sosospider
Disallow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Sosospider")
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: Sosospider
Disallow: /

nginx

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

Apache

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

06 · User agents

User agents we see for Sosospider

The user agent published by the operator:

Sosospider+(+http://help.soso.com/webspider.htm)

07 · Verification

Is it really Sosospider?

Sosospider’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 Sosospider

Is Sosospider still active?

Soso discontinued its services after Tencent invested in Sogou in September 2013. Soso now redirects to Sogou Search.

Who operated Sosospider?

It was operated for Soso, a Chinese search engine owned by Tencent Holdings.

Should I block Sosospider?

Blocking it costs nothing, because Soso no longer runs a search index. Current requests using this name are likely from other crawlers.

Sosospider was Tencent’s search engine crawler