Alexabot User Agent: What It Was & Should You Block It

01 · Operator

Who operates Alexabot

Company: Alexa Internet (Amazon)
Type: Monitoring bot

02 · Behavior

What Alexabot does

Alexabot scanned sites that signed up for Alexa Certified Site Metrics. It checked that the site was set up correctly for certified traffic measurement. The service no longer exists, so current requests with this name are not from Alexa.

03 · Impact

Why Alexabot matters for your site

If you allow it

Historical: needed for Alexa certification while the service ran

If you block it

Alexa Internet shut down in 2022
Current traffic with this name is likely spoofed

04 · Allow

How to allow Alexabot

robots.txt

User-agent: Alexabot
Allow: /

Cloudflare

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

nginx

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

Apache

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

05 · Block

How to block Alexabot

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

robots.txt

User-agent: Alexabot
Disallow: /

Cloudflare

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

nginx

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

Apache

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

06 · User agents

User agents we see for Alexabot

The user agent published by the operator:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Alexabot/1.0; +http://www.alexa.com/help/certifyscan; certifyscan@alexa.com)

07 · Verification

Is it really Alexabot?

Alexabot’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 Alexabot

Is Alexabot still active?

No. Amazon discontinued Alexa Internet on May 1, 2022, so the real Alexabot no longer runs.

Should I block Alexabot?

Blocking it has no downside. Any request using this name today does not come from an active Alexa service.

What was Alexa Certified Site Metrics?

It was a paid Alexa service in which site owners added a script to their pages to get more accurate traffic data.

Alexabot was Alexa Internet (Amazon)’s monitoring bot