How to block ZoomInfo
Operated by ZoomInfo. Zoominfobot is an indexing robot for a web search engine, similar to Google. Created by Zoom Information Inc.(www.zoominfo.com), Zoominfobot’s patented technology continually scans millions of corporate websites, press releases, electronic news services, SEC filings and other online sources. Using advanced natural language processing algorithms, ZoomInfo has created a next generation search engine focused on finding pages with information about businesses and business professionals.
How it identifies itself
ZoominfoBot (zoominfobot at zoominfo dot com)
robots.txt
What the agent asks to be told. It obeys this or it does not — nothing enforces it.
User-agent: ZoominfoBot 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 ~* "(ZoominfoBot|ZoominfoBot (zoominfobot at zoominfo dot com)|ZoomInfo)") {
return 403;
}
Apache
In .htaccess or the vhost.
BrowserMatchNoCase "ZoominfoBot" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "ZoomInfo" 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 "ZoominfoBot") or (http.user_agent contains "ZoomInfo")
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 (['ZoominfoBot', 'ZoomInfo'] as $needle) {
if (stripos($agent, $needle) !== false) {
status_header(403);
exit('Blocked: ZoomInfo');
}
}
});
robots.txt is a request. The rules below it are the wall.
ZoomInfo 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.