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

Discordbot

Discordbot is the official web fetcher for the Discord communication platform. Its purpose is to generate the rich link previews that appear when a user shares a URL in a Discord chat. It is not a general-purpose crawler; it only visits a specific page when its link is shared by a user. For website owners, these previews can significantly increase user engagement and click-through rates for content shared on Discord.

What is Discordbot?

Discordbot is a specialized web fetcher operated by the popular communication platform Discord. Its function is to collect metadata to generate link previews when users share URLs in Discord channels. The bot identifies itself in server logs with the user-agent string Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Discordbot/2.0; +https://discordapp.com). It is a lightweight metadata retriever that does not execute JavaScript or CSS. Instead, it focuses on parsing HTML meta tags, especially Open Graph tags, to create informative and visually appealing previews for shared links.

Why is Discordbot crawling my site?

Discordbot is visiting your website because a Discord user has shared a link to one of your pages in a chat. It operates on-demand, meaning it is not continuously crawling your site but is triggered only by this user action. The bot seeks basic metadata like titles, descriptions, and image URLs to generate a rich embed, or preview, for the shared link. The frequency of visits is directly tied to how often your content is shared on the Discord platform. This is a legitimate and standard function for a social platform.

What is the purpose of Discordbot?

The primary purpose of Discordbot is to improve the user experience on Discord by transforming plain URLs into rich, visual previews. When a link is shared, the bot fetches metadata to display a preview card with the page title, description, and a featured image. This benefits both users, who get immediate context about a link, and website owners. For site owners, these enhanced previews can significantly boost engagement and click-through rates—by some estimates, up to 40-60%—compared to plain text links, while also reinforcing brand identity when content is shared.

How do I block Discordbot?

If you wish to prevent Discord from generating link previews for your site, you can block Discordbot using your robots.txt file. Note that this will result in links to your site appearing as plain text URLs without any preview.

To block Discordbot, add the following lines to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Discordbot
Disallow: /

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

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., Discord), 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.