Buttondown

Link UnfurlerPurpose·Link previewSafety·SafeSEO impact·HighBlocked by·Not yet measuredSnapshot·2026-04

01 /Overview

Buttondown is a single-page fetcher operated by Buttondown. It fetches one page (or a small set) when triggered by a user action, typically a link being shared on social media, a messaging app, or an RSS reader.

Volume tracks shares and clicks rather than crawl schedules. A trending link can produce a sudden spike, but Buttondown will not crawl the rest of your site.

Blocking it usually means the link previews on the corresponding platform stop showing your title, image, and description.

See Buttondown on your own site

02 /Identification

Match the User-Agent header on incoming requests against the pattern below.

regex

Buttondown

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.

03 /Control

The polite way is a robots.txt rule. Compliant agents respect it; the others ignore it.

robots.txt

User-agent: Buttondown Disallow: /

Test a URL

Paste any URL on your site and we'll fetch its robots.txt to check whether Buttondown is allowed.

04 /Technical fingerprint

Renders JavaScript

IP verification

User-Agent only

Crawl frequency

Per user action

Honors robots.txt

Yes

Honors Crawl-delay

Varies

05 /Expected behavior

Expect one-off requests triggered by user actions like sharing a link or adding a feed. Volume tracks engagement on the host platform.

The Buttondown bot family

Buttondown runs 2 bots in total. Each one is a separate user-agent so you can allow or block them independently.

Link Unfurler

ButtondownYou are here
Buttondown RSS-Feed-Parser

Common questions

Should I let Buttondown through?

In most cases, yes. Fetchers power link previews and feed readers. Blocking breaks the user experience on social and messaging platforms. If volume gets noisy, rate-limit it before you block it outright.

Does blocking Buttondown affect my Google rankings?

No. Buttondown 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 Buttondown?

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 Buttondown", not "the traffic is genuinely Buttondown". If you need stronger guarantees, look for a reverse-DNS check or wait for Buttondown to publish IP ranges.

What breaks if I block Buttondown?

Link previews, embeds, and unfurls on whatever surface Buttondown feeds will stop rendering. Users sharing your URLs into Buttondown will see a bare link instead of a rich card. Usually that's the first thing people regret blocking.

How is Buttondown different from Buttondown's other bots?

Buttondown 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 Buttondown family above to see which ones actually matter for your site.

What's the cleanest way to control Buttondown?

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.

Agent Directory See all bots

Buttondown

Link UnfurlerPurpose·Link previewSafety·SafeSEO impact·HighBlocked by·Not yet measuredSnapshot·2026-04

01 /Overview

Volume tracks shares and clicks rather than crawl schedules. A trending link can produce a sudden spike, but Buttondown will not crawl the rest of your site.

Blocking it usually means the link previews on the corresponding platform stop showing your title, image, and description.

See Buttondown on your own site

02 /Identification

Match the User-Agent header on incoming requests against the pattern below.

regex

Buttondown

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.

03 /Control

The polite way is a robots.txt rule. Compliant agents respect it; the others ignore it.

robots.txt

User-agent: Buttondown Disallow: /

Test a URL

Paste any URL on your site and we'll fetch its robots.txt to check whether Buttondown is allowed.

04 /Technical fingerprint

Renders JavaScript

IP verification

User-Agent only

Crawl frequency

Per user action

Honors robots.txt

Yes

Honors Crawl-delay

Varies

05 /Expected behavior

Expect one-off requests triggered by user actions like sharing a link or adding a feed. Volume tracks engagement on the host platform.

The Buttondown bot family

Buttondown runs 2 bots in total. Each one is a separate user-agent so you can allow or block them independently.

Link Unfurler

ButtondownYou are here
Buttondown RSS-Feed-Parser

Common questions

Should I let Buttondown through?

Does blocking Buttondown affect my Google rankings?

No. Buttondown is not a search-engine crawler. Your ranking on Google or Bing is unaffected by what you do here.