B.E.NBacklink Exchange Network

Crawler

BENBot: the B.E.N link checker

If you found BENBot in your server logs, this page explains what it is, what it fetches and how to stop it.

User agent

Every request BENBot makes sends this user agent:

BENBot/1.0 (+https://backlinkexchangenetwork.com/bot)

What it does

B.E.N is a backlink exchange network. BENBot does two jobs for it, and nothing else.

  1. 01

    Reads sitemaps

    When a site owner adds their site to B.E.N, BENBot reads that site's sitemap to list its pages. It does not read sitemaps of sites nobody has added.

  2. 02

    Checks agreed links are live

    When two site owners agree a link exchange, BENBot fetches the pages named in that deal and checks the agreed link is there. It only fetches pages named in a deal.

How it behaves

BENBot respects robots.txt, including Crawl-delay. Each host also has a request budget, so BENBot spaces out its requests to your server.

How to block it

Add this to your robots.txt:

User-agent: BENBot
Disallow: /

If you block BENBot, links on your site can't be verified. Exchanges that include a link on your site will not show that link as live.