Archive-It
Archive-It is a web archiver operated by Internet Archive. Its purpose is to preserve a snapshot of public web pages so they remain available even after the original is changed or taken down.
Crawls are typically less frequent than search or AI crawlers, and the archived copy is usually served from a separate domain (the archive's), not from your origin.
Most archivers are aligned with the public-interest goal of historical preservation. Blocking them removes your site from that record.
See Archive-It on your own site
Match the User-Agent header on incoming requests against the pattern below.
regex
For higher confidence, also verify the source IP against the operator's published ranges. UA strings can be spoofed; IP ownership is harder to fake.
Renders JavaScript
No
IP verification
User-Agent only
Crawl frequency
Periodic snapshots
Honors robots.txt
Yes
Honors Crawl-delay
Varies
The Internet Archive bot family
See moreInternet Archive runs 6 bots in total. Each one is a separate user-agent so you can allow or block them independently.
Web Archiver
5- Archive-ItYou are here
- archive.org_bot
- ia_archiver-web.archive.org
- Internet Archive
- special_archiver
DevOps & Monitoring
1Should I let Archive-It through?
In most cases, yes. Archivers preserve the public-interest record. Blocking removes your site from that history. If volume gets noisy, rate-limit it before you block it outright.
Does blocking Archive-It affect my Google rankings?
No. Archive-It is not a search-engine crawler. Your ranking on Google or Bing is unaffected by what you do here.
How do I confirm a request is really from Archive-It?
Look at the User-Agent header in your access logs and match it against the strings listed above. Worth knowing that the User-Agent is easy to fake, so this check tells you "the traffic claims to be Archive-It", not "the traffic is genuinely Archive-It". If you need stronger guarantees, look for a reverse-DNS check or wait for Internet Archive to publish IP ranges.
Why is Archive-It archiving my site?
Archivers preserve the public record. Specific pages or domains get pulled into long-term storage so they're readable years later. Blocking removes you from that history, which is fine for some sites and a real loss for others.
How is Archive-It different from Internet Archive's other bots?
Internet Archive splits work across multiple user-agents so site owners can decide on each one independently. Training crawlers, live-fetch agents, search indexers, and agentic browsers each get their own name. Worth scanning the rest of the Internet Archive family above to see which ones actually matter for your site.
What's the cleanest way to control Archive-It?
Two layers. Robots.txt for the polite crawlers that read it, and rules at your CDN or edge for the ones that don't. Rankly's Agent Experience handles both from a single config, so you can allow, block, rate-limit, or serve a stripped-down version per bot. Agent Analytics handles the observation half so you know which bots are actually worth a rule.