The BotOfMouth bot
Found BotOfMouth/1.0 in your server logs? That is us. Here is what it reads, how often it visits, and how to stop it.
What it is
BotOfMouth is software that checks whether AI assistants recommend a business, and helps that business fix what AI reads about it. To do that, our software reads public web pages. It identifies itself with this User-Agent:
BotOfMouth/1.0 website-checkLook for BotOfMouth at the start of the User-Agent.
What it reads
- The public website of a business that uses BotOfMouth, or that its owner asked us to check: robots.txt, the sitemap and a limited number of pages.
- Public pages about that business on directories and listing sites, to check that its name, address, phone number and other facts are right.
It reads public pages only. It never signs in, never fills in forms, and never tries to get past a bot check or a captcha.
How often it visits
Usually once a week or less for each business, depending on its plan. The owner can also ask for a new check, which adds a visit.
It follows the Crawl-delay in your robots.txt, up to 10 seconds. If you ask for a longer delay, it skips your site.
How to block it
Our bot follows robots.txt. To keep it off your whole site, add these lines to your robots.txt:
User-agent: BotOfMouth
Disallow: /To block only some pages, list their paths with Disallow. When your robots.txt has no BotOfMouth group, our bot follows your rules for all bots (User-agent: *). A change applies from its next visit.
Contact us
A question, or a problem with our bot? Write to hi@botofmouth.com. We reply within 1 business day.