What is TurnitinBot?
TurnitinBot is a web crawler operated by Turnitin, an education technology company that provides plagiarism detection and academic integrity solutions. The bot collects web content to build Turnitin's database for checking submissions and detecting plagiarism with comprehensive internet coverage. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Turnitin |
| Source | Official Website |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
| Insights Last Updated | August 12, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
TurnitinBot usually returns to a small set of pages rather than crawling an entire site. Visits may follow an hourly, daily, or weekly schedule, while websites its clients do not monitor may never encounter it.
TurnitinBot's User Agent
| User Agent | TurnitinBot (https://turnitin.com/robot/crawlerinfo.html) |
How To Block TurnitinBot With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block TurnitinBot from accessing your entire website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all intelligence gatherers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: TurnitinBot # https://knownagents.com/agents/turnitinbot
Disallow: /
Global Statistics for TurnitinBot
As of August 12, 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
6% of top websites block TurnitinBot in their robots.txt files.
Overall Intelligence Gatherer Traffic
3.6% of all web traffic came from intelligence gatherers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block TurnitinBot?
If you run ads, confirm TurnitinBot's purpose before blocking it. Some intelligence gatherers measure ad placements or evaluate pages for brand safety, and blocking those agents can interfere with advertising systems. If this one serves a different purpose, weigh any research visibility against sharing business or page-level data with third parties. For context, 6% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for TurnitinBot.
Does TurnitinBot Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Yes. TurnitinBot 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 TurnitinBot respects it.
Does TurnitinBot Access Private Content?
No special access. TurnitinBot can read publicly available pages but cannot bypass authentication. Assume anything you publish openly may be collected.
Why Is TurnitinBot Visiting My Website?
A client of Turnitin may be gathering competitive intelligence, measuring advertisements, or evaluating content for brand safety. The pages requested reflect that client's objective.
How Can I Tell if TurnitinBot Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks TurnitinBot 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 "TurnitinBot". Look for repeated requests to the same small group of commercial or ad-supported pages. Because TurnitinBot does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.