iAskBot
iAskBot is blocked by 83 sites in the October 2026 survey, or 1.3% of readable files. Its operator is unclear in the community reference.
Who runs iAskBot?
| Fact | iAskBot reference entry |
|---|---|
| Operator | “Unclear at this time.” |
| Purpose | “Undocumented AI Agents” |
| Does iAskBot obey robots.txt? | “Unclear at this time.” |
| Frequency | “Unclear at this time.” |
| Cloudflare managed list for iAskBot | No |
These facts quote the stored community ai.robots.txt reference.
The reference leaves this agent’s purpose undocumented. An owner may want search visitors and answers that link back to a page while keeping its text out of model-training datasets.
How many sites block it?
A User-agent line names it in 88 files, 1.4% of 6,171 readable files. Whole-site bans, written Disallow: /, total 83, or 1.3%. That leaves 6,088 without a recorded ban.
At the top 1,000 ranks, we could read 552 files. Naming covers 20, a 3.6% share, and blocking covers 19. Blocking is more common among the leading sites, at 3.4%. Elsewhere, 5,619 readable files give 64 blocks, or 1.1%.
| Readable files | Named by | Named share | Blocked by | Blocked share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| iAskBot, all ranks | 88 | 1.4% | 83 | 1.3% |
| iAskBot, top 1,000 | 20 | 3.6% | 19 | 3.4% |
| iAskBot, remaining ranks | 68 | 1.2% | 64 | 1.1% |
This total covers whole-site bans recorded for this name. A blanket User-agent: * rule alone is outside this measure. Of 83 blocks, 1 does not also appear in our count of files naming it. The overlap between naming and blocking is 82 files. Naming without a whole-site ban accounts for 6, and 6,083 files never name it. We ignore capitalization and repeated names.
How to block or allow it
Place the group in your root robots.txt file. Per the robots.txt standard, a named group for iAskBot overrides User-agent: *.
Block the whole site
User-agent: iAskBot
Disallow: /Allow access
User-agent: iAskBot
Allow: /It's the 69th most-named crawler of the 171 we counted in the crawler index.
How we counted
For iAskBot, we surveyed Tranco’s top 10,000 sites on 19 October 2026. Each file had 8 seconds to arrive, up to 262,144 bytes. Only available files we could read enter the percentages. The file readings, including repeats, use scripts/robots_2026_08_06.py (robots.py at app commit 07104ff). See the full survey method.
Common questions
What does naming this crawler tell me?
The 88 files naming it include 6 files without a whole-site ban.
Are leading sites different?
Leading files record 3.6% with the name and 3.4% blocking it. Across all readable files, the corresponding shares are 1.4% and 1.3%.
How does the nearby crawler compare?
The nearby netEstate Imprint Crawler entry reports 86 files that name it and 0 whole-site blocks, 0.0% of readable files. Here, 88 files mention the name and 83 block access, or 1.3%.