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

Netvibes bot

The Netvibes bot is a web crawler for the social media monitoring and analytics platform Netvibes, which is operated by Dassault Systèmes. Its purpose is to collect and analyze public online content from websites, blogs, and social media. The bot's activity is triggered when a Netvibes user adds a specific site or feed to their monitoring dashboard. The collected data powers Netvibes' business intelligence and brand reputation management tools.

What is the Netvibes bot?

The Netvibes bot is the web crawler for the social media monitoring platform Netvibes, which is owned by Dassault Systèmes. It functions as a feed fetcher and web crawler that collects online content from various sources, including websites, blogs, and social media. The bot identifies itself in server logs with user-agent strings like Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com). Unlike general search crawlers, the Netvibes bot typically targets specific content that has been explicitly requested for monitoring by its users.

Why is the Netvibes bot crawling my site?

The Netvibes bot is crawling your website because a user of the Netvibes platform has added your site, blog feed, or a specific piece of your content to their monitoring dashboard. The crawling is not random; it is a direct result of user configuration for purposes like competitive analysis, industry monitoring, or brand reputation management. The frequency of visits depends on how many users are tracking your content and how often it is updated.

What is the purpose of the Netvibes bot?

The purpose of the Netvibes bot is to support the Netvibes social business intelligence platform. The platform allows organizations to create custom dashboards to aggregate and analyze online data, helping them monitor their online presence, track market trends, and understand competitor activities. For website owners, having your content monitored on Netvibes indicates that it is considered valuable by industry professionals, which can potentially increase your content's reach and influence.

How do I block the Netvibes bot?

To prevent the Netvibes bot from accessing your website, you can add a specific disallow rule to your robots.txt file. This is the standard method for managing access for web crawlers.

Add the following lines to your robots.txt file to block the Netvibes bot:

User-agent: Netvibes
Disallow: /

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

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., Dassault Systèmes), 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.