What is special_archiver?
special_archiver is a web crawler operated by Internet Archive as part of their Archive-It service, which creates and preserves collections of web content. This bot visits websites to capture and archive web pages for long-term preservation and historical research purposes. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Category
Expected Behavior
special_archiver 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 special_archiver in their robots.txt files.
Overall Archiver Traffic
As of July 6, 2026, 0.1% of all web traffic came from archivers.
Top Visited Website Categories
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.
special_archiver's User Agent
| User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; special_archiver/3.11.1; +https://archive.org/details/archive.org_bot) |
Access other known user agents and IP addresses using the Enterprise API.
How To Block special_archiver
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block special_archiver from accessing your entire website. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: special_archiver # https://knownagents.com/agents/special-archiver
Disallow: /Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block special_archiver?
Almost never. special_archiver 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 special_archiver right now.
Does special_archiver Respect Robots.txt?
Yes. special_archiver 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 special_archiver actually honors it.
Does special_archiver Access Private Content?
It archives only what any anonymous visitor can see. Anything public at crawl time can stay retrievable in special_archiver's archive long after you take it down.
Why Is special_archiver Visiting My Website?
special_archiver 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 special_archiver Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks special_archiver 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 "special_archiver". Look for periodic full page captures that recur on a schedule. Keep in mind that special_archiver 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.