What is DotBot?

DotBot is the web crawler operated by Moz, the well-known SEO software company. It crawls the web to build Moz’s link index and power their suite of SEO tools, including Link Explorer, Domain Authority calculations, and competitive analysis features.

Purpose of DotBot

DotBot crawls the web to power Moz’s SEO platform:

  • Backlink discovery: Map and index link relationships
  • Domain Authority (DA): Calculate Moz’s proprietary DA metric
  • Page Authority (PA): Assess individual page strength
  • Spam Score: Identify potentially spammy sites
  • Link Explorer: Power Moz’s backlink analysis tool
  • Competitive research: Provide competitor link data
  • SERP analysis: Support rank tracking and insights

How DotBot Works

DotBot operates as a relatively polite, focused crawler:

  1. URL discovery through links, sitemaps, and submissions
  2. Page crawling to extract content and links
  3. Link analysis to build Moz’s link graph
  4. Metric calculation for DA, PA, and Spam Score
  5. Index updates with fresh data
  6. Quality assessment to filter spam and low-quality sites

Unlike more aggressive crawlers, DotBot:

  • Crawls less frequently
  • Focuses on quality over quantity
  • Prioritizes important pages
  • Respects server resources
  • Maintains smaller but higher-quality index

User Agent

DotBot identifies itself as:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; DotBot/1.2; +https://opensiteexplorer.org/dotbot)

Alternative identification:

DotBot/1.2
rogerbot (Moz's older crawler, mostly deprecated)

Note: “rogerbot” was Moz’s previous crawler name, now largely replaced by DotBot.

Is DotBot Good or Bad?

Pros:

  • Reputable company: Moz is a trusted SEO industry leader
  • Polite crawler: Lower volume than competitors
  • Respects robots.txt: Follows webmaster guidelines strictly
  • Well-behaved: Good crawl-delay respect
  • Quality focus: Filters spam and low-quality content
  • Established metrics: Powers widely-used DA/PA scores
  • Professional tools: Serves legitimate SEO professionals

Cons:

  • Competitor intelligence: Provides data to competitors
  • Not a search engine: Won’t improve search rankings
  • Server resources: Still consumes bandwidth and CPU
  • Privacy concerns: Exposes your link building strategy
  • Metric gaming: Some try to manipulate DA/PA scores
  • Smaller index: Less comprehensive than Ahrefs/Majestic

Should You Allow DotBot?

This depends on your specific needs:

Allow DotBot if:

  • You use Moz tools for SEO research
  • You want your DA/PA scores calculated
  • You have adequate server resources
  • You want visibility in Moz Link Explorer
  • You value being indexed in SEO tools
  • Server impact is minimal (it usually is)

Block DotBot if:

  • You want to hide link profiles from competitors
  • You have very limited server resources
  • You’re in highly competitive niches
  • You don’t use or care about Moz tools
  • You prefer complete privacy
  • You’re concerned about metric manipulation

How to Block DotBot

Using robots.txt

Block DotBot completely:

User-agent: DotBot
Disallow: /

Block specific sections:

User-agent: DotBot
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /api/
Allow: /

Block both DotBot and older rogerbot:

User-agent: DotBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow: /

Server-Level Blocking

Nginx configuration:

# Block DotBot and rogerbot
if ($http_user_agent ~* (DotBot|rogerbot)) {
    return 403;
}

Apache .htaccess:

# Block DotBot and rogerbot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (DotBot|rogerbot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]

Crawl Rate and Impact

Typical Activity:

DotBot is one of the most polite SEO crawlers:

  • 100-500 requests per day (significantly less than competitors)
  • 10-50MB daily bandwidth consumption
  • Weekly or monthly visits rather than daily
  • Focused crawling on important pages
  • Low concurrent connections

Resource Impact:

DotBot typically has the lowest impact among major SEO crawlers:

  • Much less aggressive than AhrefsBot or MJ12bot
  • Lower volume than SemrushBot
  • Very respectful of server resources
  • Rarely causes performance issues
  • Good citizen of the web

Controlling Crawl Rate

1. Robots.txt Crawl-Delay

User-agent: DotBot
Crawl-delay: 10

Note: DotBot already crawls slowly, so this may not be necessary.

2. Selective Access

User-agent: DotBot
Disallow: /heavy-resource-page/
Disallow: /large-downloads/
Allow: /

3. Rate Limiting (Usually Unnecessary)

Because DotBot is already polite, aggressive rate limiting is rarely needed. But if desired:

# Nginx rate limiting for DotBot
limit_req_zone $http_user_agent zone=dotbot:10m rate=10r/m;

if ($http_user_agent ~* "DotBot") {
    limit_req zone=dotbot burst=5;
}

4. Contact Moz Support

For any concerns:

  • Email: help@moz.com
  • Request crawl rate adjustments
  • Report issues
  • Discuss specific needs

Moz is known for being very responsive to webmaster concerns.

Detecting DotBot

Check Server Logs

# Find DotBot requests
grep -i "dotbot\|rogerbot" /var/log/apache2/access.log

# Count requests per day
grep -i "dotbot" access.log | grep "$(date +%d/%b/%Y)" | wc -l

# Most crawled URLs
grep -i "dotbot" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20

# Bandwidth usage
grep -i "dotbot" access.log | awk '{sum += $10} END {print sum/1024/1024 " MB"}'

Verify Legitimacy

Verify using reverse DNS:

host [IP address]
# Should resolve to *.moz.com or verified Moz IP ranges

host [resolved hostname]
# Should return the original IP

Legitimate DotBot requests come from Moz’s verified infrastructure.

Monitor Impact

Watch for (though rarely an issue):

  • Server load patterns
  • Bandwidth consumption
  • Crawl frequency
  • Error rates

Understanding Moz Metrics

If you allow DotBot, your site will be included in Moz’s metrics:

Domain Authority (DA)

  • Predicts ranking potential
  • Scale: 1-100
  • Based on linking root domains
  • Comparative metric (not absolute)
  • Updates monthly
  • Higher is better, but relative to competitors

Page Authority (PA)

  • Predicts individual page ranking potential
  • Scale: 1-100
  • Based on links to specific page
  • More granular than DA
  • Useful for content evaluation

Spam Score

  • Estimates likelihood of penalization
  • Scale: 0-100%
  • Based on spam signals
  • Lower is better
  • Flags: 1-30% (Low), 31-60% (Medium), 61-100% (High)
  • Linking Domains: Number of unique domains linking to you
  • Inbound Links: Total number of links
  • Equity-Passing Links: Followed links that pass value
  • Link Quality: Based on DA of linking sites

Comparison with Other SEO Bots

Feature DotBot AhrefsBot SemrushBot MJ12bot
Crawl frequency Low High Moderate Very High
Resource usage Low High Moderate Very High
Robots.txt respect Excellent Yes Yes Yes
Crawl-delay respect Excellent Partial Yes Yes
Index size Moderate Massive Large Massive
Data quality High Excellent Excellent Excellent
Politeness Excellent Moderate Good Moderate
Industry usage High Very High Very High High

Benefits of Allowing DotBot

For Your Own Analysis:

  • Check your Domain Authority
  • Monitor Page Authority for key pages
  • Track backlink growth in Moz
  • Analyze your link profile
  • Monitor spam score
  • Compare with competitors

For Visibility:

  • Appear in Moz Link Explorer
  • Be discoverable by SEO professionals
  • Show your DA/PA metrics
  • Demonstrate link authority
  • Build credibility with Moz users

For SEO Community:

  • Contribute to industry-standard metrics
  • Support widely-used DA/PA scoring
  • Help improve SEO tools
  • Enable competitive analysis
  • Support research and benchmarking

When to Allow DotBot

Good Candidates:

  • Most websites (due to low impact)
  • SEO-focused businesses
  • Content marketers
  • Companies using Moz tools
  • Sites building link authority
  • Publishers and media sites

Especially If:

  • You actively work on SEO
  • You track your DA/PA scores
  • You have adequate server capacity (even modest)
  • You want SEO tool visibility
  • You value industry-standard metrics

When to Block DotBot

Consider Blocking If:

  • Extremely limited server resources
  • Highly competitive niche requiring secrecy
  • Private blog networks (PBNs)
  • Testing sites or staging environments
  • Internal tools not meant for indexing
  • Complete privacy required

Privacy Concerns:

  • Don’t want competitors seeing link profiles
  • Hiding new link building campaigns
  • Proprietary SEO strategies
  • Competitive intelligence concerns

Common Misconceptions

Myth 1: “Blocking DotBot improves rankings”

Reality: DotBot doesn’t affect search rankings. It’s not a search engine crawler.

Myth 2: “DotBot slows down my site”

Reality: DotBot is one of the most polite crawlers. Impact is minimal.

Myth 3: “High DA means high rankings”

Reality: DA is predictive, not causative. It correlates with ranking potential but doesn’t directly cause rankings.

Myth 4: “I can manipulate DA by blocking DotBot”

Reality: Blocking prevents calculation, but doesn’t improve actual link profile.

Myth 5: “DotBot crawls as aggressively as others”

Reality: DotBot is significantly less aggressive than AhrefsBot or MJ12bot.

Best Practices

If You Allow DotBot:

  1. Monitor occasionally: Check crawl logs monthly
  2. Track your metrics: Use Moz to see your DA/PA
  3. Optimize for quality: Focus on genuine link building
  4. Don’t game metrics: Build real links, not artificial DA
  5. Use the data: Leverage Moz tools for insights

If You Block DotBot:

  1. Use robots.txt: Clear, proper blocking
  2. Verify blocking: Check logs to confirm
  3. Block old crawler too: Include rogerbot
  4. Document reasoning: Note why you blocked
  5. Consider alternatives: Other ways to track SEO

Alternatives to Complete Blocking

1. Selective Blocking

User-agent: DotBot
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /staging/
Allow: /blog/
Allow: /

2. Slow Down Crawling

User-agent: DotBot
Crawl-delay: 30

Though DotBot is already slow, so this is rarely needed.

3. Block Specific Content Types

User-agent: DotBot
Disallow: /*.pdf$
Disallow: /*.zip$
Disallow: /downloads/
Allow: /

Industry Perspective

Who Typically Allows DotBot:

  • Most websites (90%+ allow it)
  • SEO agencies and consultants
  • Content marketing sites
  • Publishers and media
  • E-commerce sites
  • SaaS companies
  • Anyone doing SEO work

Who Typically Blocks DotBot:

  • Private blog networks (PBNs)
  • Highly resource-constrained sites
  • Extremely competitive niches (rare)
  • Internal tools and staging sites
  • Sites with complete privacy requirements

Technical Details

Crawl Behavior:

  • Excellent robots.txt compliance
  • Respects crawl-delay strictly
  • Follows redirects properly
  • Handles canonical tags correctly
  • Does not execute forms
  • Respects nofollow links
  • Crawls JavaScript content (basic)

IP Ranges:

  • Operates from verified Moz infrastructure
  • IP ranges published and maintained
  • Can verify via reverse DNS
  • Located in US data centers primarily

Update Frequency:

  • Index updates: ~Monthly
  • DA/PA updates: Monthly (announced schedule)
  • Link data: Continuous but slow accumulation
  • Less real-time than Ahrefs/Semrush

Rogerbot vs DotBot

Historical Context:

  • rogerbot: Moz’s original crawler (named after Moz founder Roger Mozbot)
  • DotBot: Newer, improved crawler replacing rogerbot
  • Transition period: Both ran simultaneously for a while
  • Current status: DotBot is primary, rogerbot mostly deprecated

If Blocking:

Block both to be safe:

User-agent: DotBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow: /

Impact on Domain Authority

If You Allow DotBot:

  • Your DA will be calculated and updated monthly
  • Backlinks will be discovered and indexed
  • You’ll appear in Moz Link Explorer
  • Competitors can see your DA/PA
  • You can track your progress

If You Block DotBot:

  • Your DA won’t be calculated (or will be stale)
  • New backlinks won’t be discovered by Moz
  • You won’t appear in fresh Moz data
  • Can’t track your DA progress
  • Competitors won’t see current Moz metrics

Note: Your actual SEO performance is unchanged—only the visibility of metrics changes.

Use Cases

Allow DotBot For:

  • Public websites: Blogs, news, e-commerce
  • SEO campaigns: Active link building
  • Content marketing: Building authority
  • Brand building: Demonstrating credibility
  • Portfolio sites: Showcasing work
  • Business sites: Normal operations

Block DotBot For:

  • PBNs: Private blog networks
  • Test environments: Staging sites
  • Internal tools: Not meant for public
  • Competitive secrecy: Extreme privacy needs
  • Resource constraints: Very limited hosting

Monitoring and Analytics

Key Metrics to Track:

If you allow DotBot, monitor:

  1. Domain Authority trend: Is it growing?
  2. Page Authority of key pages: Which pages are strong?
  3. Link growth: How many links is Moz finding?
  4. Spam Score: Any red flags?
  5. Linking domains: Quality of backlinks

Tools to Use:

  • Moz Link Explorer (primary)
  • Moz Pro (full suite)
  • MozBar browser extension (quick checks)
  • Moz API (for automation)
  • Third-party tools using Moz data

Common Issues and Solutions

Issue 1: DA Not Updating

Cause: DotBot may not be crawling your site Solutions:

  • Verify DotBot isn’t blocked
  • Check robots.txt
  • Submit URL to Moz
  • Wait for next monthly update

Cause: DA is relative, or links not discovered Solutions:

  • Wait for index updates (monthly)
  • Build more diverse links
  • Focus on quality over quantity
  • Check if links are being crawled

Issue 3: DA Fluctuations

Cause: Algorithm updates, relative scoring Solutions:

  • Don’t obsess over minor changes
  • Focus on long-term trends
  • Compare with competitors
  • Continue quality link building

Future of DotBot

As Moz and SEO evolve:

  • AI integration: Smarter crawling and analysis
  • Better metrics: More accurate DA/PA calculations
  • Faster updates: More frequent index refreshes
  • Enhanced politeness: Even better resource management
  • Expanded coverage: Broader web indexing

Conclusion

DotBot is one of the most well-behaved, polite crawlers on the web. It powers Moz’s industry-standard Domain Authority metric and professional SEO tools.

For most sites, allowing DotBot is recommended because:

  • Minimal server impact (very low resource usage)
  • Powers widely-used industry metrics (DA/PA)
  • Enables valuable SEO analysis
  • Helps track link building progress
  • Industry-standard tool used by professionals

Consider blocking only if:

  • Operating private networks (PBNs)
  • Extreme competitive secrecy required
  • Absolutely minimal server resources
  • Complete privacy is essential

Unlike aggressive crawlers like MJ12bot or AhrefsBot, DotBot rarely causes issues. For most webmasters, the benefits of being indexed in Moz’s tools outweigh the minimal resource cost. Monitor your server logs to verify the impact, but you’ll likely find it negligible.

Test DotBot Access to Your Site

Use our SEO Tools Bot Checker to verify if DotBot can access your website. This free tool tests robots.txt rules and actual bot access for Moz and other SEO analytics crawlers.

Related SEO Tool Bots:

  • AhrefsBot - Ahrefs backlink and SEO crawler
  • SemrushBot - SEMrush competitive analysis bot
  • MJ12bot - Majestic backlink analysis crawler

For comprehensive bot testing across all categories, explore our free bot detection tools.