01 · Operator
Who operates VelenPublicWebCrawler
02 · Behavior
What VelenPublicWebCrawler does
Velen crawls millions of public pages each month and skips login-protected content. It fetches one page at a time, at most one every 2 seconds. It follows robots.txt and meta instructions and picks up changes within hours.
03 · Impact
Why VelenPublicWebCrawler matters for your site
If you allow it
- Follows robots.txt and meta tags
- Slow crawl rate
- Provides a contact address
If you block it
- Feeds commercial business datasets
- No direct traffic benefit
04 · Allow
How to allow VelenPublicWebCrawler
robots.txt
User-agent: VelenPublicWebCrawler
Allow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "VelenPublicWebCrawler")
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: VelenPublicWebCrawler
Allow: /nginx
# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "VelenPublicWebCrawler") { return 403; }Apache
# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} VelenPublicWebCrawler [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]05 · Block
How to block VelenPublicWebCrawler
VelenPublicWebCrawler follows robots.txt, so one rule is enough. Use a server or CDN rule only to stop spoofed copies.
robots.txt
User-agent: VelenPublicWebCrawler
Disallow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "VelenPublicWebCrawler")
Action: BlockWordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: VelenPublicWebCrawler
Disallow: /nginx
# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "VelenPublicWebCrawler") {
return 403;
}Apache
# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} VelenPublicWebCrawler [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>06 · User agents
User agents we see for VelenPublicWebCrawler
The user agent published by the operator:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; VelenPublicWebCrawler/1.0; +https://velen.io)07 · Verification
Is it really VelenPublicWebCrawler?
VelenPublicWebCrawler’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 VelenPublicWebCrawler
How do I block VelenPublicWebCrawler?
Add "User-agent: VelenPublicWebCrawler" with "Disallow: /" to robots.txt. Velen says changes take effect within hours.
Who runs Velen?
Velen crawls the web for Hunter. Contact: engineering@velen.io.
Last reviewed Oct 7, 2026