Published on 2025-08-07T06:18:08Z

aiHitBot

aiHitBot is a commercial web crawler operated by aiHit, a business intelligence company. It scans websites to extract and structure public business information, such as company details, products, and contact data. This information is then used to power aiHit's business intelligence services, which are sold to clients for market research, competitive analysis, and lead generation.

What is aiHitBot?

aiHitBot is an intelligence-gathering web crawler operated by aiHit, a company that processes business information from across the web. The bot systematically crawls and indexes web pages to collect data for aiHit's commercial business intelligence services. It identifies itself in server logs with the user-agent string Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; aiHitBot/2.9; +https://www.aihitdata.com/about). Technically, it is a lightweight crawler that focuses on extracting structured text from static HTML and does not process JavaScript, CSS, or cookies.

Why is aiHitBot crawling my site?

aiHitBot is visiting your website to collect business-related information that can be sold to aiHit's clients. If your site contains public details about your company, products, services, or contact information, the bot may be cataloging this content for its database. The frequency of its visits depends on the relevance of your site's information to aiHit's data collection priorities. The crawling is generally considered permitted for publicly accessible websites, provided the bot respects your robots.txt file.

What is the purpose of aiHitBot?

The core purpose of aiHitBot is to serve as the data collection engine for aiHit's business intelligence platform. The information it gathers from public websites is organized and processed to provide insights for aiHit's clients. These services likely support market analysis, competitive intelligence, and lead generation activities. For website owners, there is no direct benefit from the bot's crawling, although having your business information included in aiHit's database could potentially increase your company's visibility to their clients.

How do I block aiHitBot?

To block aiHitBot from accessing your website, you can add a specific directive to your robots.txt file. This is the standard method for instructing web crawlers not to visit your site.

Add the following lines to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: aiHitBot
Disallow: /

How to verify the authenticity of the user-agent operated by aiHit?

Reverse IP lookup technique

To verify user-agent authenticity, you can use host linux command two times with the IP address of the requester.
  1. > host IPAddressOfRequest
    This command returns the reverse lookup hostname (e.g., 4.4.8.8.in-addr.arpa.). 
  2. > host ReverseDNSFromTheOutputOfFirstRequest
If the output matches the original IP address and the domain is associated with a trusted operator (e.g., aiHit), the user-agent can be considered legitimate.

IP list lookup technique

Some operators provide a public list of IP addresses used by their crawlers. This list can be cross-referenced to verify a user-agent's authenticity. However, both operators and website owners may find it challenging to maintain an up-to-date list, so use this method with caution and in conjunction with other verification techniques.