Ask Jeeves/Teoma User Agent: What It Was & How to Block It

01 · Operator

Who operates Ask Jeeves/Teoma

Company: Ask Jeeves (Ask.com)
Type: Search engine crawler
Official docs: en.wikipedia.org

02 · Behavior

What Ask Jeeves/Teoma does

The crawler collected pages for the Ask Jeeves web search index. Ask Jeeves integrated Teoma's search technology in 2002. The webmaster help pages linked in its user agent no longer exist.

03 · Impact

Why Ask Jeeves/Teoma matters for your site

If you allow it

Requests from the genuine crawler served a known search engine
Blocking a defunct crawler has little effect

If you block it

The webmaster documentation is gone, so current requests cannot be verified
Modern traffic with this UA may be spoofed

04 · Allow

How to allow Ask Jeeves/Teoma

robots.txt

User-agent: Teoma
Allow: /

Cloudflare

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

nginx

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

Apache

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

05 · Block

How to block Ask Jeeves/Teoma

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

robots.txt

User-agent: Teoma
Disallow: /

Cloudflare

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

nginx

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

Apache

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

06 · User agents

User agents we see for Ask Jeeves/Teoma

The operator does not publish a full user agent string. Requests contain the token “Teoma”.

07 · Verification

Is it really Ask Jeeves/Teoma?

Ask Jeeves/Teoma’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 Ask Jeeves/Teoma

What is Ask Jeeves/Teoma?

It was the user agent of the Ask Jeeves search crawler. It used Teoma technology, which Ask Jeeves bought in 2001.

Is the Ask Jeeves crawler still active?

The webmaster pages linked in its user agent now return errors. Current requests with this UA cannot be verified against official documentation.

Ask Jeeves/Teoma was Ask Jeeves (Ask.com)’s search engine crawler