What is micro-crawl?
micro-crawl is an AI data scraper. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when micro-crawl visits your website.
Category
| Triggered By | Automated crawl |
| Used for AI Model Training | Yes |
| Affects AI Chat & Search Visibility | Not directly |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
Why Is micro-crawl Visiting My Website?
Your content matched the criteria its operator set for a training dataset. micro-crawl typically discovers pages through external links, sitemaps, and seed lists rather than because someone selected your site individually.
Should I Block micro-crawl?
Block micro-crawl if you want more control over whether your work is used for AI training. Allowing it may increase the chance that your brand appears in AI-generated answers, but either choice leaves traditional search rankings unchanged. For context, 7% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for micro-crawl.
How Do I Block micro-crawl Using Robots.txt?
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block micro-crawl from accessing your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all AI data scrapers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: micro-crawl # https://knownagents.com/agents/micro-crawl
Disallow: /Insights for micro-crawl
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
micro-crawl Traffic
Frequently Asked Questions
What Traffic Patterns Should I Expect From micro-crawl?
micro-crawl tends to make broad, high-volume sweeps across many pages. Timing is unpredictable: traffic may remain heavy throughout a collection pass, then stop entirely.
Does micro-crawl Follow Robots.txt Rules?
micro-crawl 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 micro-crawl respects it.
Is micro-crawl Used for AI Model Training?
Yes. micro-crawl collects web content for use in AI training datasets. Blocking it limits future collection but cannot remove content that was collected previously.
Does Blocking micro-crawl Affect AI Search or Citations?
Not directly. Blocking micro-crawl limits collection for AI training rather than controlling a live AI search index or citation system.
Does micro-crawl Access Private Content?
Not through legitimate access. micro-crawl primarily targets public content, but some training-data scrapers also attempt to collect gated or paywalled pages. If content loads without authentication, assume it can be collected.
How Can I Verify a Request From micro-crawl?
Agent Analytics tracks micro-crawl visits in real time. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "micro-crawl". Look for high page counts, short gaps between requests, and deep traversal through linked content. Because micro-crawl does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.