What is ibou-search?
ibou-search is Ibou's main web crawler. It discovers and indexes public pages for Ibou's search engine, which cites sources and links readers to the original publishers. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when ibou-search visits your website.
Category
| Example User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; ibou-search/2.0; +https://ibou.com/crawlers.html) |
| Operated By | Ibou |
| Source | Official Website |
| Identity |
Verified
Verified Identification
Requests claiming to be this agent can be authenticated using its published verification method. |
| Triggered By | Automated crawl |
| Used for AI Model Training | Not expected |
| Affects AI Chat & Search Visibility | Possibly |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
Why Is ibou-search Visiting My Website?
ibou-search is adding new or changed pages to its search index. It may have discovered your site through links, a sitemap, or direct submission.
Should I Block ibou-search?
No, unless you want to remove your pages from that search engine. ibou-search supplies its index, so blocking it can eliminate your visibility and organic traffic there. Nearly every website should allow this category. For context, 7% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for ibou-search.
How Do I Block ibou-search Using Robots.txt?
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block ibou-search from accessing your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all search engine crawlers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: ibou-search # https://knownagents.com/agents/ibou-search
Disallow: /Insights for ibou-search
As of November 9, 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 Compliance
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Frequently Asked Questions
What Traffic Patterns Should I Expect From ibou-search?
ibou-search follows an algorithmic schedule shaped by your site's popularity, update cadence, and domain authority. It generally spreads requests across recurring crawl passes, throttles itself to limit server load, and respects crawl rules more reliably than most other bots.
Does ibou-search Follow Robots.txt Rules?
ibou-search is expected to follow robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the appropriate first step if you want to block it. Automatic Robots.txt can add and maintain that rule, while Agent Analytics lets you verify whether ibou-search respects it.
Is ibou-search Used for AI Model Training?
Not ordinarily. ibou-search is not categorized as an AI training scraper or data provider, so AI model training is not its expected purpose.
Does Blocking ibou-search Affect AI Search or Citations?
Blocking ibou-search can remove your pages from the search engine it supplies. That may also affect AI products that rely on the same index, but it does not directly control unrelated AI search services.
Does ibou-search Access Private Content?
No special access. ibou-search can reach only content available to anonymous visitors and does not sign in. Make sure sensitive content is not public by mistake.
How Can I Verify a Request From ibou-search?
Agent Analytics tracks visits from ibou-search and every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper, then authenticates each visit using ibou-search's published verification method. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "ibou-search". Look for recurring passes that revisit changed pages and discover new ones. A matching log entry alone is not proof because any bot can claim to be ibou-search.
How Is ibou-search Different From Other Ibou Agents?
Ibou operates separate agents for different purposes, so each agent should be evaluated and controlled independently.
- ibou-discovery: ibou-discovery crawls public articles for Ibou Discovery, which recommends stories from a range of sources and links readers to the original publishers.
- ibou-images: ibou-images is Ibou's crawler for images on public websites, gathering visual content for its search products.
- ibou-news: ibou-news crawls public news articles for Ibou News, which groups coverage by topic and links readers to the original publishers.
- IbouBot: IbouBot is Ibou's development and testing crawler. Ibou uses separate user agents, including ibou-search, for production search crawling and indexing.