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AI crawler

What is Bytespider?

Bytespider is a crawler that identifies itself as ByteDance and is widely reported to collect pages for AI training.

AI trainingNot documentedNo way to verify
Operator
ByteDance
Purpose
AI training. Collects pages to train AI models. Blocking it does not remove you from AI answers.ByteDance does not document it. The purpose comes from third-party trackers.
robots.txt token
Bytespider
Sample user agent
Not documented by the operator. Trackers report a user agent like "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Bytespider; spider-feedback@bytedance.com) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/70.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"; treat it as unconfirmed.User agents change with versions. Match on the token, not the full string.
Follows robots.txt
Not documented by the operator. ByteDance publishes no crawler documentation, and reports on whether it follows robots.txt disagree.
How to verify
ByteDance doesn't publish a way to verify it.
Sources
ByteDance publishes no documentation for it.
Last reviewed

Allow or block Bytespider

Block Bytespider
User-agent: Bytespider
Disallow: /

Asks Bytespider not to crawl any page. Well-behaved crawlers stop; it does not stop anyone who ignores robots.txt.

Allow Bytespider
User-agent: Bytespider
Allow: /

Lets Bytespider crawl everything. You only need this if a broader rule would otherwise block it.

Should you block it?

Blocking Bytespider asks ByteDance not to use new crawls of your pages for training. It doesn't remove you from AI answers.

Write a full policy with the AI Crawler Policy Generator

Bytespider can't be verified

ByteDance doesn't publish IP ranges, DNS names or signatures for Bytespider. The user agent is the only signal, and anyone can copy it, so treat a request that claims to be Bytespider as unproven.

Questions about Bytespider

Is Bytespider safe to allow?

Bytespider reads public pages; it does not log in or submit forms. Whether to allow it is about how your content is used, not security.

How do I know a request is really Bytespider?

You can't, from the request alone. ByteDance doesn't publish IP ranges, DNS names or signatures for it, so the user agent is the only signal, and anyone can copy that.

How often does Bytespider visit?

It depends on your site; ByteDance doesn't publish a schedule. Referscope shows the real visits.

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