What is Archive-It?
Archive-It is a web archiving crawler operated by Internet Archive that preserves copies of web pages for long-term digital preservation and historical record-keeping. It is commonly used by libraries, museums, universities, and other institutions to create and maintain collections of archived web content. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Internet Archive |
| Source | Official Website |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
| Insights Last Updated | August 11, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
Archive-It periodically fetches complete pages rather than checking metadata alone. Visit frequency typically rises with your site's popularity and update cadence.
Archive-It's User Agent
| User Agent | alaska_state_library_https://archive-it.org/organizations/305 |
How To Block Archive-It With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block Archive-It from accessing your entire website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all archivers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: Archive-It # https://knownagents.com/agents/archive-it
Disallow: /Global Statistics for Archive-It
As of August 11, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocking Trend
0% of top websites block Archive-It in their robots.txt files.
Overall Archiver Traffic
0.0% of all web traffic came from archivers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block Archive-It?
Rarely. Archive-It preserves snapshots of your pages through redesigns, migrations, and broken links. Blocking it prevents future captures but does not remove existing snapshots. To remove those, you must contact the archive directly. Almost none of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for Archive-It.
Does Archive-It Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Yes. Archive-It is expected to follow robots.txt directives, so a disallow rule is the appropriate first step. Automatic Robots.txt can add and maintain that rule, while Agent Analytics lets you verify whether Archive-It respects it.
Does Archive-It Access Private Content?
No. Archive-It archives only what an anonymous visitor can see. Anything public at crawl time may remain available in its archive long after you remove it from your site.
Why Is Archive-It Visiting My Website?
Archive-It is preserving your pages as part of a historical record. It returns periodically so the archive can capture how your content changes over time.
How Can I Tell if Archive-It Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks Archive-It visits in real time alongside every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "Archive-It". Look for a page and its embedded assets being fetched again after a long interval. Because Archive-It does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.