How to block BrightEdge Bot
Operated by BrightEdge. Autopilot is an SEO marketing automation tool that includes features for internal linking and image optimization. We crawl customer sites so that we can determine the best links to use on the site and to find images that need to be optimized.
How it identifies itself
BrightEdge Crawler/1.0 ([email protected])
robots.txt
What the agent asks to be told. It obeys this or it does not — nothing enforces it.
User-agent: BrightEdge Disallow: /
nginx
In the server block, then reload.
# In the server block. 403 rather than 444: a closed connection tells the
# operator nothing, and an agent that gets a status code can log it.
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(BrightEdge Crawler|BrightEdge|BrightEdge Bot)") {
return 403;
}
Apache
In .htaccess or the vhost.
BrowserMatchNoCase "BrightEdge Crawler" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "BrightEdge" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "BrightEdge Bot" bad_bot
<RequireAll>
Require all granted
Require not env bad_bot
</RequireAll>
Cloudflare
Security → WAF → Custom rules.
# Security → WAF → Custom rules, action: Block (http.user_agent contains "BrightEdge Crawler") or (http.user_agent contains "BrightEdge") or (http.user_agent contains "BrightEdge Bot")
WordPress
A child theme's functions.php, or a small plugin.
// functions.php of a child theme, or a small plugin. Runs before WordPress
// builds the page, so a blocked agent costs one PHP process and no queries.
add_action('init', function () {
$agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
foreach (['BrightEdge Crawler', 'BrightEdge', 'BrightEdge Bot'] as $needle) {
if (stripos($agent, $needle) !== false) {
status_header(403);
exit('Blocked: BrightEdge Bot');
}
}
});
robots.txt is a request. The rules below it are the wall.
BrightEdge Bot publishes a token, so the directive above will work for as long as it keeps honouring it — and nothing except its own good manners makes it. The server rules match on a header the requester sets, which stops the agent that says who it is and not the one that copies somebody else's name. Botscope verifies identity against DNS and published address ranges, records which check decided each request, and shows you the ones that lied.