What is Internet Archive?
Internet Archive is an archiver operated by Internet Archive. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Category
Expected Behavior
Internet Archive returns on a cadence to capture full snapshots of your pages for the historical record. Expect complete page fetches rather than metadata checks, at a frequency that rises with your site's popularity and how often your content changes.
Overview
| Operated By | Internet Archive |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
| Insights Last Updated | July 6, 2026 |
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocking Trend
As of July 6, 2026, 0% of top websites block Internet Archive in their robots.txt files.
Overall Archiver Traffic
As of July 6, 2026, 0.1% of all web traffic came from archivers.
This data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the world's top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
How To Block Internet Archive
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block Internet Archive from accessing your entire website. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: Internet Archive # https://knownagents.com/agents/internet-archive
Disallow: /Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block Internet Archive?
Almost never. Internet Archive preserves snapshots of your pages so the record survives redesigns, migrations, and dead links. Blocking only stops new captures. Snapshots that already exist stay public until you ask the archive itself to remove them. Almost none of the top websites we track have robots.txt rules for Internet Archive right now.
Does Internet Archive Respect Robots.txt?
Yes. Internet Archive is expected to honor robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the right first move. Automatic Robots.txt adds and maintains that rule for you, and Agent Analytics confirms Internet Archive actually honors it.
Does Internet Archive Access Private Content?
It archives only what any anonymous visitor can see. Anything public at crawl time can stay retrievable in Internet Archive's archive long after you take it down.
Why Is Internet Archive Visiting My Website?
Internet Archive is preserving your pages as part of the historical record. Visits recur on a schedule so the archive can capture how your content changes over time.
How Can I Tell if Internet Archive Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks Internet Archive 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 "Internet Archive". Look for periodic full page captures that recur on a schedule. Keep in mind that Internet Archive doesn't publish a verification method, so any client can claim its user agent string and a log match is a hint rather than proof.