What is coccocbot-ads? Coc Coc's advertising crawler
coccocbot-ads is the Coc Coc crawler for its advertising service.
35 of the 1662 major websites we measure block coccocbot-ads in robots.txt (2%). 0 of those sites name it directly in their robots.txt; the rest are covered by a wildcard rule.
Key facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Operator | Coc Coc |
| Used for | Coc Coc advertising |
| Type | Advertising. Checks or classifies pages for an advertising service. It isn't counted in the AI crawler figures. |
| robots.txt token | coccocbot-ads |
| Operator's documentation | Read it here |
What blocking coccocbot-ads does
Coc Coc says coccocbot covers all its bots, so a coccocbot group applies to this one unless a group names it. The figures below apply that.
How to allow or block coccocbot-ads
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: coccocbot-ads Disallow: /
User-agent: coccocbot-ads Allow: /
coccocbot-ads user agent string
Coc Coc's page doesn't list a full string, so look for coccocbot-ads in the user agent field of your logs.
How to verify a request is really coccocbot-ads
Anyone can put a crawler's name in a user agent string, so the name alone proves nothing. We did not find a published IP list or reverse DNS rule from Coc Coc.
How to whitelist coccocbot-ads 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 coccocbot-ads afterwards.
On Cloudflare, also check AI Crawler and Agent access policies, which can block search, agent and training traffic across a site.
Why coccocbot-ads 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 ~* "coccocbot-ads") {
return 403;
}Who blocks coccocbot-ads, by sector
| Sector | Sites measured | Blocking | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social and media platforms | 115 | 9 | 8% |
| News publishers | 182 | 8 | 4% |
| Reference and research | 114 | 4 | 4% |
| Finance and business media | 94 | 3 | 3% |
| Technology media | 126 | 4 | 3% |
| AI companies | 128 | 3 | 2% |
| E-commerce and retail | 92 | 1 | 1% |
| Government and institutions | 98 | 1 | 1% |
| Hosting and infrastructure | 98 | 1 | 1% |
| SaaS platforms | 196 | 1 | 1% |
| Developer references | 159 | 0 | 0% |
| Health publishers | 88 | 0 | 0% |
| SEO and marketing tools | 86 | 0 | 0% |
| Travel | 86 | 0 | 0% |
Sites blocking coccocbot-ads
academia.edu, afterpay.com, barrons.com, consilium.europa.eu, devclass.com, disneyplus.com, distill.pub, eluniversal.com.mx, facebook.com, fortinet.com, golem.de, hackernoon.com, imdb.com, instacart.com, instagram.com, linguee.com, lobste.rs, magento.com, marketwatch.com, meta.ai, netflix.com, news.com.au, poe.com, reddit.com, reuters.com, sciencedirect.com, theregister.com, thesun.co.uk, thetimes.co.uk, threads.net, todayonline.com, wordreference.com, wsj.com, x.com, zeit.de.
Other Coc Coc crawlers
coccocbot (all Coc Coc bots), coccocbot-web (search indexing), coccocbot-image (image indexing), coccocbot-fast (fast indexing), coccocbot-shopping (shopping crawl).
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. "coccocbot-ads block rate across major websites." Measured 12 November 2026. https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/coccocbot-ads/
<a href="https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/coccocbot-ads/">coccocbot-ads block rate across major websites, IndexHalo</a>