01 · Operator
Who operates ibou-search
- Company
- Babbar (Ibou)
- Official docs
- ibou.com
02 · Behavior
What ibou-search does
ibou-search finds publicly accessible pages and indexes them for the ibou search engine. ibou states it does not use the data to train AI models. It waits 5 seconds between requests to the same host. It is listed separately from IbouBot, with its own user agent and robots.txt token.
03 · Impact
Why ibou-search matters for your site
If you allow it
- Your pages can appear in ibou search
- It follows robots.txt and Crawl-delay
- Requests can be verified by reverse DNS and an IP list
If you block it
- ibou is a small search engine with limited traffic
- It adds crawl load
04 · Allow
How to allow ibou-search
robots.txt
User-agent: ibou-search
Allow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "ibou-search")
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: ibou-search
Allow: /nginx
# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "ibou\-search") { return 403; }Apache
# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ibou\-search [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]05 · Block
How to block ibou-search
ibou-search follows robots.txt, so one rule is enough. Use a server or CDN rule only to stop spoofed copies.
robots.txt
User-agent: ibou-search
Disallow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "ibou-search")
Action: BlockWordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: ibou-search
Disallow: /nginx
# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "ibou\-search") {
return 403;
}Apache
# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ibou\-search [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>06 · User agents
User agents we see for ibou-search
The user agent published by the operator:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; ibou-search/2.0; +https://ibou.com/crawlers.html)07 · Verification
Is it really ibou-search?
Anyone can copy a user agent. A reverse DNS lookup of a real request resolves to ibou.io, and that hostname resolves back to the same IP.
FAQ
Questions about ibou-search
What is ibou-search?
It is a crawler of the ibou search engine. It discovers and indexes public pages.
Does ibou-search respect robots.txt?
Yes. ibou states it follows Disallow and Crawl-delay. Use the token ibou-search.
How can I verify ibou-search?
Use forward-confirmed reverse DNS; the hostname must end in ibou.io. ibou also publishes its IP ranges as a JSON file.
Last updated Oct 19, 2026