What is Barkrowler? Babbar's SEO crawler
Barkrowler is the crawler of Babbar.tech. It builds a graph of the web whose data and metrics feed SEO and online marketing tools.
55 of the 1662 major websites we measure block Barkrowler in robots.txt (3%). 22 of those sites name it directly in their robots.txt; the rest are covered by a wildcard rule.
Key facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Operator | Babbar |
| Used for | Babbar's web graph |
| Type | SEO tool. Collects web data for an SEO tool. Listed here because people look it up beside AI crawlers. It isn't counted in the AI crawler figures. |
| robots.txt token | Barkrowler |
| Operator's documentation | Read it here |
What blocking Barkrowler does
Babbar says Barkrowler follows robots.txt, including Disallow rules and Crawl-delay, under the barkrowler user agent.
How to allow or block Barkrowler
Add one of these groups to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain. It is a stated preference that well-behaved crawlers read, not an enforcement mechanism.
User-agent: Barkrowler Disallow: /
User-agent: Barkrowler Allow: /
Barkrowler user agent string
Babbar's page doesn't list a full string, so look for Barkrowler in the user agent field of your logs.
How to verify a request is really Barkrowler
Anyone can put a crawler's name in a user agent string, so the name alone proves nothing. Babbar gives babbar.eu as Barkrowler's reverse DNS suffix.
How to whitelist Barkrowler in a firewall or CDN
robots.txt only states a preference. A firewall, CDN or bot protection service can still refuse the request, and the crawler then gets an error even though robots.txt allows it.
- Check that no group in your robots.txt blocks it, using the rule above.
- Add an allow rule in your firewall or CDN that matches the name in the user agent. Keep the rule narrow, because anyone can copy a name.
- Check your server logs for a 200 response from Barkrowler afterwards.
On Cloudflare, also check AI Crawler and Agent access policies, which can block search, agent and training traffic across a site.
Why Barkrowler gets a 403 or 405 error
A 403 means the server refused the request, which usually points to a firewall or bot rule. A 405 means the server refused the request's method, so check any rule that only permits certain methods. A crawler that obeys robots.txt won't request a page it is told to avoid, so an error in your logs points to your server's configuration. To stop it deliberately at the server, this nginx rule returns a 403:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Barkrowler") {
return 403;
}Who blocks Barkrowler, by sector
| Sector | Sites measured | Blocking | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social and media platforms | 115 | 11 | 10% |
| News publishers | 182 | 14 | 8% |
| Technology media | 126 | 7 | 6% |
| Finance and business media | 94 | 4 | 4% |
| Reference and research | 114 | 4 | 4% |
| AI companies | 128 | 4 | 3% |
| Government and institutions | 98 | 2 | 2% |
| SaaS platforms | 196 | 3 | 2% |
| Developer references | 159 | 2 | 1% |
| E-commerce and retail | 92 | 1 | 1% |
| Health publishers | 88 | 1 | 1% |
| Hosting and infrastructure | 98 | 1 | 1% |
| SEO and marketing tools | 86 | 1 | 1% |
| Travel | 86 | 0 | 0% |
Sites blocking Barkrowler
academia.edu, afterpay.com, azcentral.com, barrons.com, bhf.org.uk, breakingnews.ie, cio.com, computerbase.de, consilium.europa.eu, corriere.it, devclass.com, dialpad.com, disneyplus.com, distill.pub, eluniversal.com.mx, facebook.com, flickr.com, fortinet.com, golem.de, hackernoon.com, imdb.com, instacart.com, instagram.com, linguee.com, lobste.rs, magento.com, marketwatch.com, meta.ai, metacritic.com, modal.com, netflix.com, news.com.au, news24.com, pcworld.com, poe.com, reddit.com, reuters.com, rosettacode.org, sap.com, sciencedirect.com, seekingalpha.com, spiegel.de, sr.ht, theregister.com, thesun.co.uk, thetimes.co.uk, threads.net, todayonline.com, usatoday.com, who.int, wordreference.com, wsj.com, x.com, yoast.com, zeit.de.
Sites that allow Barkrowler by name
boingboing.net, pinterest.com, slate.com.
See all 36 AI crawlers, the rule change log or the full study. Being reachable is only the first step: how AI search engines choose what to cite covers the rest.
Cite this data
You are welcome to quote or republish these figures. Please credit IndexHalo with a link to this page (CC BY 4.0). All our datasets are on the data page.
IndexHalo. "Barkrowler block rate across major websites." Measured 12 November 2026. https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/barkrowler/
<a href="https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/barkrowler/">Barkrowler block rate across major websites, IndexHalo</a>