What is James BOT?
James BOT is cognitiveSEO's web crawler that analyzes website links, content, and SEO factors. It crawls websites to provide comprehensive SEO audits, backlink analysis, and site performance data for digital marketing optimization and competitor research. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Category
Expected Behavior
James BOT maps sites the way its customers' SEO tools need, following internal links to build a full picture of structure, content, and ranking signals. Expect thorough crawls rather than spot checks, with frequency rising when your site or your competitors are actively monitored in its tools.
Overview
| Operated By | cognitiveSEO |
| 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 James BOT in their robots.txt files.
Overall SEO Crawler Traffic
As of July 6, 2026, 2.4% of all web traffic came from SEO crawlers.
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.
James BOT's User Agent
| User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/76.0.3809.87 Safari/537.36 - James BOT - WebCrawler http://cognitiveseo.com/bot.html |
Access other known user agents and IP addresses using the Enterprise API.
How To Block James BOT
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block James BOT from accessing your entire website. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: James BOT # https://knownagents.com/agents/james-bot
Disallow: /Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block James BOT?
Only if you want your own pages and outbound links out of those tools. James BOT collects the ranking and backlink data behind SEO tools, likely including ones you or your agency use, and it does not change how search engines rank you. Blocking it will not hide your backlink profile either, because backlinks are discovered on the sites that link to you. Almost none of the top websites we track have robots.txt rules for James BOT right now.
Does James BOT Respect Robots.txt?
Yes. James BOT 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 James BOT actually honors it.
Does James BOT Access Private Content?
Login walls stop it. James BOT analyzes public pages for rankings, links, and site structure.
Why Is James BOT Visiting My Website?
Your domain shows up in the ranking, backlink, and competitor data James BOT's operator sells. If anyone tracks your site or your competitors in an SEO tool, James BOT visits you.
How Can I Tell if James BOT Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks James BOT 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 "James BOT". Look for full site crawls that follow your internal links. Keep in mind that James BOT 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.