What is FreshBot? Seznam.cz's search crawler
FreshBot is Seznam.cz's faster crawler for fresh content, mostly on news sites.
41 of the 1662 major websites we measure block FreshBot in robots.txt (2%). 4 of those sites name it directly in their robots.txt; the rest are covered by a wildcard rule.
Key facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Operator | Seznam.cz |
| Used for | Seznam.cz search |
| Type | Search engine. Builds a search engine's index. Listed here because people look it up beside AI crawlers. It isn't counted in the AI crawler figures. |
| robots.txt token | FreshBot |
| Operator's documentation | Read it here |
What blocking FreshBot does
Blocking FreshBot keeps new pages out of Seznam.cz's fast crawl; SeznamBot has its own group.
How to allow or block FreshBot
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: FreshBot Disallow: /
User-agent: FreshBot Allow: /
FreshBot user agent string
Seznam.cz's page doesn't list a full string, so look for FreshBot in the user agent field of your logs.
How to verify a request is really FreshBot
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 Seznam.cz.
How to whitelist FreshBot 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 FreshBot afterwards.
On Cloudflare, also check AI Crawler and Agent access policies, which can block search, agent and training traffic across a site.
Why FreshBot 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 ~* "FreshBot") {
return 403;
}Who blocks FreshBot, by sector
| Sector | Sites measured | Blocking | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social and media platforms | 115 | 11 | 10% |
| News publishers | 182 | 10 | 5% |
| Reference and research | 114 | 4 | 4% |
| Technology media | 126 | 5 | 4% |
| Finance and business media | 94 | 3 | 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 | 2 | 1% |
| Developer references | 159 | 0 | 0% |
| Health publishers | 88 | 0 | 0% |
| SEO and marketing tools | 86 | 0 | 0% |
| Travel | 86 | 0 | 0% |
Sites blocking FreshBot
academia.edu, afterpay.com, barrons.com, consilium.europa.eu, devclass.com, disneyplus.com, distill.pub, eluniversal.com.mx, facebook.com, flickr.com, fortinet.com, hackernoon.com, heise.de, imdb.com, instacart.com, instagram.com, lemonde.fr, lesechos.fr, linguee.com, lobste.rs, magento.com, marketwatch.com, meta.ai, netflix.com, news.com.au, pinterest.com, poe.com, reddit.com, reuters.com, sap.com, sciencedirect.com, t3n.de, theregister.com, thesun.co.uk, thetimes.co.uk, threads.net, todayonline.com, wordreference.com, wsj.com, x.com, zeit.de.
Other Seznam.cz crawlers
SeznamBot (search indexing).
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. "FreshBot block rate across major websites." Measured 12 November 2026. https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/freshbot/
<a href="https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/freshbot/">FreshBot block rate across major websites, IndexHalo</a>