Barkrowler User Agent: What It Is & How to Block It

01 · Operator

Who operates Barkrowler

Company: Babbar
Type: SEO tool crawler
Official docs: babbar.tech

02 · Behavior

What Barkrowler does

It crawls pages to build and update Babbar's link graph of the web. Babbar sells SEO and marketing tools based on this data. It respects robots.txt and Crawl-delay using the crawler-commons library. By default it waits 5 seconds between requests to one host.

03 · Impact

Why Barkrowler matters for your site

If you allow it

Your site appears correctly in Babbar's link data
It respects robots.txt and Crawl-delay
Babbar publishes an IP list for verification

If you block it

It brings no direct traffic to your site
It adds crawl load
Competitors can use the link data

04 · Allow

How to allow Barkrowler

robots.txt

User-agent: barkrowler
Allow: /

Cloudflare

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

nginx

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

Apache

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

05 · Block

How to block Barkrowler

Barkrowler follows robots.txt, so one rule is enough. Use a server or CDN rule only to stop spoofed copies.

robots.txt

User-agent: barkrowler
Disallow: /

Cloudflare

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

nginx

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

Apache

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

06 · User agents

User agents we see for Barkrowler

The user agent published by the operator:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Barkrowler/0.9; +https://babbar.tech/crawler)

07 · Verification

Is it really Barkrowler?

Anyone can copy a user agent. Real Barkrowler requests come from the IP ranges published at babbar.tech/barkrowler-ip-ranges.json. A reverse DNS lookup of a real request resolves to babbar.eu, and that hostname resolves back to the same IP.

FAQ

Questions about Barkrowler

Who runs Barkrowler?

Barkrowler is run by Babbar (babbar.tech). It feeds the web graph behind Babbar's SEO tools.

How do I block Barkrowler?

Add User-agent: barkrowler with Disallow: / to robots.txt. Babbar states the crawler respects robots.txt and Crawl-delay.

How do I verify Barkrowler?

Check the IP against Babbar's published barkrowler-ip-ranges.json. Reverse DNS should resolve to a babbar.eu hostname.

Barkrowler is Babbar’s SEO tool crawler