Sysomos Bot: What It Is & How to Block It

01 · Operator

Who operates Sysomos

Company: Sysomos (now part of Meltwater)
Type: Other bot

02 · Behavior

What Sysomos does

Sysomos built tools that analyzed social media and online media coverage for brands and agencies. Its crawler fetched web content for this analysis. The sysomos.com domain now redirects to Meltwater.

03 · Impact

Why Sysomos matters for your site

If you allow it

Your content may appear in media monitoring for brands

If you block it

No search traffic benefit
The Sysomos brand no longer operates on its own

04 · Allow

How to allow Sysomos

robots.txt

User-agent: Sysomos
Allow: /

Cloudflare

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

nginx

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

Apache

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

05 · Block

How to block Sysomos

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

robots.txt

User-agent: Sysomos
Disallow: /

Cloudflare

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

nginx

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

Apache

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

06 · User agents

User agents we see for Sysomos

The user agent published by the operator:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Sysomos/1.0; +http://www.sysomos.com/; Sysomos)

07 · Verification

Is it really Sysomos?

Sysomos’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 Sysomos

Is the Sysomos crawler still active?

Sysomos was acquired by Meltwater in 2018, and sysomos.com now redirects to Meltwater. Current activity under this name is unconfirmed.

Should I block Sysomos?

It brings no search traffic. Block it if you do not want your content in commercial media monitoring.

Sysomos was Sysomos (now part of Meltwater)’s other bot