Bot signals · Web crawler

What is Cludo crawler?

The Cludo crawler indexes its customers’ websites for Cludo’s site search. Cludo says all its services, crawlers included, reach the internet through one outbound proxy.

risk.is_crawler

All web crawlers

01 · Profile

Cludo crawler at a glance.

What to look for in your logs, and what the lookup API returns for its addresses.

Type: Web crawler
User agent: cludo.com bot
robots.txt: User-agent: cludo
API flag: risk.is_crawler

A user agent alone never sets a flag. Anyone can claim to be Cludo crawler; the flag follows the address the request comes from.

02 · In the response

What a match looks like.

A lookup of a Cludo crawler address sets risk.is_crawler. The flags come with geolocation and network data in the same response, for API keys on every paid plan.

The response says which kind of bot an address belongs to, not which operator. A request that claims to be Cludo crawler while risk.is_crawler is false should not be trusted as Cludo crawler.

GET /api/lookup/{ip}?key=YOUR_API_KEY

{
  // … location and network fields …
  "risk": {
    "is_ai": false,
    "is_crawler": true,
    "is_scanner": false
  }
}

03 · Control

Allow or block Cludo crawler.

robots.txt

User-agent: cludo
Disallow: /

Cludo recommends naming its crawler simply cludo in robots.txt (User-agent: cludo), so the rule keeps working when the full user agent changes.

To enforce it

robots.txt is a request. Well-behaved bots follow it; impostors using its name don’t.
Firewall, WAF or CDN. Many offer bot rules you can allow or deny by category. Use them to enforce what robots.txt only asks for.
In your app. Look up the client address and allow or deny on risk.is_crawler, alongside the user agent.
Never on the user agent alone. Blocking the name stops only honest clients; allowing it lets anyone in who borrows it.