Skip to content

When an AI Overview appears, organic click-through can fall by more than half (Seer Interactive). See which of your pages are exposed.

Our bots

RankSage bots, in plain words.

Last updated 31 October 2026

If you saw a RankSage user agent in your logs, this page says what it was doing. Each bot names itself and links to its own section here.

01

RankSageBot, the page reader

Reads public pages, sitemaps and feeds. It is the bot you are most likely to see.

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; RankSageBot/1.0; +https://www.ranksage.com/bot#crawler)
What it reads
A member's own pages, sitemaps and feeds. On other sites: pages an AI answer cited, pages that mention a member's brand, competitor homepages, sitemaps and feeds, and public forum threads.
When
When a member's report runs, on its schedule or when they ask for it.
robots.txt
We obey robots.txt on other people's sites. Sites a RankSage member added and verified as their own are read because the owner asked. We keep a robots.txt answer for up to 24 hours.
02

RanksageBot, the content crawler

Reads the text of a member's own pages so we can review their content.

RanksageBot/1.0 (+https://www.ranksage.com/bot#content-crawler)
What it reads
A member's own pages, sometimes through a hosted fetch service that adds this name to its request. It also reads the public setup file an app publishes when it asks to connect to a RankSage account.
When
When a member's content review runs, or when an app asks to connect.
robots.txt
A member's own site is read because the owner asked, so robots.txt is not checked there. Before the fetch service reads anyone else's page for us, we check that site's robots.txt for RankSageBot.
03

RanksageBot, the site audit

Checks a member's own site for technical problems and whether pages can be indexed.

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; RanksageBot/1.0; +https://www.ranksage.com/bot#site-audit)
What it reads
Pages of a site the member added and verified as their own.
When
When the member runs an audit, or on the audit's schedule.
robots.txt
Only runs on a site its owner added to RankSage, so robots.txt is not checked. The owner can stop it by removing the site.
04

RanksageVerifyBot, the ownership check

Confirms that a member owns the site they added.

RanksageVerifyBot/1.0 (+https://www.ranksage.com/bot#verification)
What it reads
One file or tag the member placed on their site, and the key file used to notify search engines of changes.
When
When the member verifies a site, or sets up change notifications.
robots.txt
Only runs on a site its owner added to RankSage, so robots.txt is not checked. The owner can stop it by removing the site.
05

RankSageBot, Competitor Trace

Reads a competitor page a member chose to watch, to spot changes.

RankSageBot/1.0 (+https://www.ranksage.com/bot#competitor-trace; competitor-trace)
What it reads
The watched page, plus public web-archive and domain-registry lookups about it.
When
On the member's watch schedule, or when they open a trace.
robots.txt
We obey robots.txt on other people's sites. Sites a RankSage member added and verified as their own are read because the owner asked. We keep a robots.txt answer for up to 24 hours.
06

RankSage-WordPress-Connect

Talks to a member's WordPress site while they connect our plugin.

RankSage-WordPress-Connect/1.0 (+https://www.ranksage.com/bot#wordpress-connect)
What it reads
The WordPress setup endpoints the member gave us access to. Nothing else.
When
Only during the connect flow the member started.
robots.txt
Only runs on a site its owner added to RankSage, so robots.txt is not checked. The owner can stop it by removing the site.
07

The forwarder test

Checks that a member's AI-crawler tracking still works. It sends a few marked requests and counts how many their tracking code reports back.

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; GPTBot/1.2) RankSage-Delivery-Probe/1 (+https://www.ranksage.com/bot#forwarder-probe; nonce=…)
What it reads
Only the site owner's own homepage. At most 3 requests per test, spaced 1.5 seconds apart.
When
About once a week, or when the owner asks for a test.
robots.txt
Only runs on a site its owner added and verified, so robots.txt is not checked. It carries the GPTBot name because tracking code already installed only passes on known AI-crawler names. The RankSage-Delivery-Probe marker and one-time code let the owner, and us, tell it apart. We never count it as a GPTBot visit.
08

How to block us

Add this to your robots.txt. One RankSageBot group covers every RankSageBot and RanksageBot request we check robots.txt for: any page on a site that is not a member's own.

User-agent: RankSageBot
Disallow: /
09

Contact

Something looks wrong, or a bot ignored your rules? Tell us and include a log line.

Contact RankSage