What RedirectaBot is

RedirectaBot is the User-Agent string our backend sends when the Redirecta redirect checker fetches a URL on someone's behalf. The string is:

RedirectaBot/1.0 (+https://redirecta.io/bot)

Each request happens because a person pasted a URL into the checker and clicked Run. One submission, one fetch, one identified request.

RedirectaBot is not a crawler

RedirectaBot does not discover URLs, follow links inside fetched pages, read sitemaps, or come back on a schedule. There is no autonomous exploration. The submitted URL and its redirect chain are the entire scope of any single request.

This is why we do not consult robots.txt for these requests. Robots.txt governs autonomous crawlers that find URLs on their own. RedirectaBot only fetches URLs supplied by a person who is asking us to follow them.

Why RedirectaBot appears in your logs

Someone used the checker to test a URL on your domain. The submission could come from you, from an SEO consultant auditing your redirects, from a developer verifying a redirect rule, or from a stranger investigating a chain that touches your site. In every case the request is a single HTTP call started by a person, completing within ten seconds.

Behaviour and limits

RedirectaBot follows at most 20 redirects in a chain before stopping. Each individual HTTP request times out after 10 seconds. Concurrent requests to the same domain are rate-limited so a burst of users testing URLs on your site cannot pile up. A 429 or 503 response with a Retry-After header causes RedirectaBot to back off.

How to identify RedirectaBot in your logs

Search your access logs for the literal string RedirectaBot. The User-Agent always carries a parenthesised link back to this page, so a request claiming to be RedirectaBot but not linking here is not us.

How to block RedirectaBot

Block by User-Agent string. RedirectaBot honours the block: a rejected request causes the user in the checker to see that result on their screen, with no further attempts.

Nginx

if ($http_user_agent ~* "RedirectaBot") {
    return 403;
}

Apache (.htaccess)

SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "RedirectaBot" bad_bot
Deny from env=bad_bot

Cloudflare WAF

Add a rule with the expression (http.user_agent contains "RedirectaBot") and the action set to Block.

String format

RedirectaBot follows the standard self-identifying-bot pattern: RedirectaBot/<version> (+<info-url>). The version bumps when the checker changes in a way worth signalling. The info URL is always this page.

Contact

Questions, unexpected behaviour, or a request to change how RedirectaBot interacts with your site: [email protected] or the contact form.