What is Moz dotbot?

Consider blocking Moz dotbot only if you do not want your pages included in SEO databases. It does not influence how search engines rank you, and blocking it will not hide backlinks to your site because those are discovered on the linking sites. Almost none of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for Moz dotbot.

Yes. Moz dotbot 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 Moz dotbot respects it.

No. Moz dotbot can reach only public pages, and authentication prevents it from accessing private content.

Your domain appears in the ranking, backlink, or competitor data maintained by Moz dotbot's operator. A customer may be tracking your site, one of your competitors, or a backlink that connects another site to yours.

Agent Analytics tracks Moz dotbot 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 "Moz dotbot". Look for comprehensive site crawls that follow internal links. Because Moz dotbot does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.