Gigabot

Search Engine

Last updated:

Allow

Essential for organic search visibility.

Recommended action: Allow access and monitor crawl consistency.

Category

Search Engine

Primary use case

Web search indexing

Trust level

Review recommended

robots.txt

Unknown

Gigabot Traffic (Last 90 Days)

Not enough network data yet.

Track this bot on your site

What is Gigabot?

Search Engine Crawler bot

What Gigabot means for your site

Gigabot is how your pages get discovered and ranked in web search results. Regular crawling means your content is being indexed and updated. Crawl frequency often reflects how search engines perceive your site's authority and freshness. A drop in crawling can signal technical problems, while consistent activity indicates a healthy site.

What should you do?

  • Allow Gigabot full access to your site
  • Check robots.txt to ensure important pages are not blocked
  • Monitor crawl frequency trends in BotSights
  • Investigate if crawl activity drops unexpectedly
  • Ensure your sitemap is accessible and up-to-date

See Gigabot on your own site

BotSights tracks every Gigabot visit in real time, including which pages it crawls, how often, and from where.

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How to identify Gigabot

Gigabot uses the user-agent "Gigabot" and robots.txt compliance unconfirmed. Verify by checking the source IP against published ranges.

Gigabotgigabot

How to block Gigabot

Three robots.txt options below. Pick the one that matches your goal. Each snippet lists every known Gigabot user-agent pattern so the rules apply regardless of which one the bot announces. Compliance with robots.txt is unconfirmed for Gigabot, so verify with crawl logs after deploying.

Edit robots.txt with care

A single misplaced line can de-index your entire site. Common mistake: pasting User-agent: * followed by Disallow: / blocks every bot, not just Gigabot, including Googlebot. Always paste the snippet between existing rules (not over them), keep the User-agent line scoped to Gigabot's patterns, and verify with Google's robots.txt tester before deploying. If you are not sure, ask a developer first.

Option 1: Block all access

Tells Gigabot not to crawl any URL on your site. Use this when you want the bot completely off your content.

User-agent: Gigabot
User-agent: gigabot
Disallow: /

Option 2: Block specific paths only

Keep public content crawlable but exclude sensitive or non-public sections. Add one Disallow: line per path. Replace the example paths with your own.

User-agent: Gigabot
User-agent: gigabot
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /checkout/

Option 3: Slow down with a crawl delay

Crawl-delay is a voluntary directive that asks the bot to wait the given number of seconds between requests. Useful when Gigabot is hammering your origin and slowing the site down for real visitors, but you do not want to block it outright. The value is in seconds, so 10 means at most one request every ten seconds. Not all bots honour this directive (Googlebot ignores it; Bingbot, Yandex, and many AI crawlers do respect it).

User-agent: Gigabot
User-agent: gigabot
Crawl-delay: 10

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the User-Agent for Gigabot?

Gigabot identifies itself with the User-Agent string "Gigabot" (alternate forms: gigabot). Use this in robots.txt rules and server-side filtering.

Should I block Gigabot?

No. Blocking Gigabot removes your pages from this search results and directly hurts your organic traffic. The only legitimate use case for blocking is on staging or development environments where you do not want indexing.

Should I block Gigabot on my staging or dev site?

Yes — staging environments should not be indexed. Use robots.txt with "User-agent: Gigabot / Disallow: /" or apply HTTP basic auth. Better: use a noindex meta tag plus a different hostname (staging.example.com) so production is unaffected.

Why has Gigabot stopped visiting my site?

Common causes: robots.txt misconfiguration (accidental Disallow), server errors (5xx responses cause crawl-rate to drop), slow page load, soft 404s, or natural crawl budget adjustment. Check Search Console (or equivalent) for crawl errors first.

How does Gigabot decide which pages to crawl?

Gigabot prioritizes based on perceived page importance (links, freshness, content quality), site authority, and crawl budget. Submit a sitemap and ensure your most important pages are reachable from the homepage in 2-3 clicks for best coverage.

How can I tell if Gigabot traffic is real and not spoofed?

User-Agent strings can be faked by scrapers pretending to be Gigabot. Verify by checking the source IP against the operator's published ranges. BotSights flags spoofed traffic automatically and shows a verified badge per visit.

Does Gigabot respect Crawl-delay?

Behavior varies. Set Crawl-delay in robots.txt and monitor whether crawl rate drops.

Monitor search crawlers before visibility drops

Track which pages search engine bots visit, spot crawl changes early, and catch issues before they affect rankings.

  • Page-level crawl activity for every search bot
  • Detect crawl drops and spikes instantly
  • Monitor the bots that drive your organic traffic
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