AI search crawlers

Channel3Bot

Channel3Bot is a bot that indexes pages so an AI answer engine can cite them, and its operator has not been publicly identified. The token has been seen in server logs, but no operator has published documentation for it. No IP range list or reverse-DNS convention is published, so a request carrying this user agent cannot be proven genuine and a robots.txt rule alone will not stop a forgery.

Operator unknownClaim onlyrobots.txt:No policy

Live check

Verify an IP that claimed to be Channel3Bot

No operator check exists for Channel3Bot. This still shows what the address really is.

Reference

Channel3Bot at a glance

Reference data for the Channel3Bot crawler
User agentChannel3Bot

Token only: match on the substring.

OperatorNot publicly identified
PurposeAI search crawlers
Respects robots.txtNo policy
Verification methodClaim onlyNone published, user agent only

No IP range file and no reverse-DNS convention have been published for this agent. The user-agent string is the only signal, and any client can send it, so treat a match as a claim rather than proof.

Crawl patternNot published
Robots.txt tokensChannel3Bot
Operator documentationNone published

No operator documents this token. Everything here comes from the string and the traffic.

robots.txt

Allow or block Channel3Bot

Paste one at the root of your domain. Rules are per token.

Block Channel3Bot
User-agent: Channel3Bot
Disallow: /
Allow Channel3Bot
User-agent: Channel3Bot
Allow: /
Allow, except the pages you never want quoted
User-agent: Channel3Bot
Allow: /
Disallow: /account/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /search

Edit the Disallow paths to match your own URLs.

What blocking actually costs you

Blocking Channel3Bot takes the site out of the index behind its answers, so it stops being cited there. If referral traffic from AI answers matters to you, block the training crawler instead and leave this one alone.

Build a file for every crawler

FAQ

Channel3Bot questions

What is Channel3Bot?

Channel3Bot is a bot that indexes pages so an AI answer engine can cite them, and its operator has not been publicly identified. The token has been seen in server logs, but no operator has published documentation for it. No IP range list or reverse-DNS convention is published, so a request carrying this user agent cannot be proven genuine and a robots.txt rule alone will not stop a forgery.

Does Channel3Bot respect robots.txt?

Not documented. No operator statement says whether Channel3Bot reads robots.txt, so add the rule but verify in your logs that the requests actually stop.

How do I verify a request really came from Channel3Bot?

You cannot, at least not from the request itself. No IP range file and no reverse-DNS convention have been published for this agent. The user-agent string is the only signal, and any client can send it, so treat a match as a claim rather than proof. Compare the source IP against hosting and datacenter ranges instead, and rate limit anything that behaves like a crawler.

How do I block Channel3Bot?

Add the Channel3Bot token to robots.txt with Disallow: /. If the crawler ignores robots.txt, match the user agent at your CDN or reverse proxy and return 403 there instead.

Will blocking Channel3Bot hurt my search rankings?

Blocking Channel3Bot takes the site out of the index behind its answers, so it stops being cited there. If referral traffic from AI answers matters to you, block the training crawler instead and leave this one alone.

    Channel3Bot: User Agent, IP Verification & robots.txt | IPScanner