What is MojeekBot? Mojeek's search crawler
MojeekBot is the crawler of Mojeek, an independent search engine.
34 of the 1662 major websites we measure block MojeekBot in robots.txt (2%). 13 of those sites name it directly in their robots.txt; the rest are covered by a wildcard rule.
Key facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Operator | Mojeek |
| Used for | Mojeek 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 | MojeekBot |
| Operator's documentation | Read it here |
What blocking MojeekBot does
Mojeek says MojeekBot follows the robots exclusion standard: it uses the first group whose User-agent contains MojeekBot, or else the * group, ignores Crawl-delay and requests at most one page a second.
How to allow or block MojeekBot
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: MojeekBot Disallow: /
User-agent: MojeekBot Allow: /
MojeekBot user agent string
Mojeek's page doesn't list a full string, so look for MojeekBot in the user agent field of your logs.
How to verify a request is really MojeekBot
Anyone can put a crawler's name in a user agent string, so the name alone proves nothing. Mojeek says to check that the address's reverse DNS name is in mojeek.com and that a forward lookup returns the same address, or to compare it with Mojeek's published MojeekBot address list.
How to whitelist MojeekBot 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 MojeekBot afterwards.
On Cloudflare, also check AI Crawler and Agent access policies, which can block search, agent and training traffic across a site.
Why MojeekBot 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 ~* "MojeekBot") {
return 403;
}Who blocks MojeekBot, by sector
| Sector | Sites measured | Blocking | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social and media platforms | 115 | 9 | 8% |
| News publishers | 182 | 9 | 5% |
| Reference and research | 114 | 4 | 4% |
| AI companies | 128 | 3 | 2% |
| Government and institutions | 98 | 2 | 2% |
| Technology media | 126 | 2 | 2% |
| E-commerce and retail | 92 | 1 | 1% |
| Finance and business media | 94 | 1 | 1% |
| Hosting and infrastructure | 98 | 1 | 1% |
| SaaS platforms | 196 | 1 | 1% |
| SEO and marketing tools | 86 | 1 | 1% |
| Developer references | 159 | 0 | 0% |
| Health publishers | 88 | 0 | 0% |
| Travel | 86 | 0 | 0% |
Sites blocking MojeekBot
academia.edu, afterpay.com, azcentral.com, bundesregierung.de, consilium.europa.eu, devclass.com, disneyplus.com, distill.pub, eluniversal.com.mx, facebook.com, flickr.com, fortinet.com, instacart.com, instagram.com, linguee.com, lobste.rs, magento.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, usatoday.com, webmasterworld.com, wordreference.com, x.com, zeit.de.
Sites that allow MojeekBot by name
apollo.io, barrons.com, hackernoon.com, imdb.com, marketwatch.com, pinterest.com, sap.com, wsj.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. "MojeekBot block rate across major websites." Measured 12 November 2026. https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/mojeekbot/
<a href="https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/mojeekbot/">MojeekBot block rate across major websites, IndexHalo</a>