AI search crawlers

ZanistaBot

ZanistaBot 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 ZanistaBot

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

Reference

ZanistaBot at a glance

Reference data for the ZanistaBot crawler
User agentZanistaBot

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 tokensZanistaBot
Operator documentationNone published

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

robots.txt

Allow or block ZanistaBot

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

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

Edit the Disallow paths to match your own URLs.

What blocking actually costs you

Blocking ZanistaBot 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

ZanistaBot questions

What is ZanistaBot?

ZanistaBot 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 ZanistaBot respect robots.txt?

Not documented. No operator statement says whether ZanistaBot 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 ZanistaBot?

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 ZanistaBot?

Add the ZanistaBot 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 ZanistaBot hurt my search rankings?

Blocking ZanistaBot 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.

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