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

news-please bot

news-please is an open-source news crawler and information extraction library, not a bot from a single service. It is a tool used primarily by academic researchers and data scientists to collect and process news articles from online sources for analysis. Its presence on your site indicates that an individual or organization is using this tool to gather your news content, likely for research purposes.

What is the news-please bot?

news-please is an open-source web crawler and content extractor library designed specifically for news articles. It is not a bot from a commercial service but a tool that can be used by anyone, particularly academic researchers and data scientists. It works by crawling news websites to download articles and then extracting structured information like the title, author, publication date, and main content. It identifies itself with the user-agent string news-please. A key feature is its ability to perform a full website extraction with minimal configuration.

Why is the news-please bot crawling my site?

The news-please bot is crawling your website because an individual or organization is using the tool to collect your news content for analysis. It typically targets news sites to build datasets for research in fields like social sciences or media studies. The frequency of visits is determined entirely by how the user has configured the tool; it could be a one-time crawl for historical data or a recurring crawl to monitor new articles. Since anyone can use this tool, the crawling may be unauthorized.

What is the purpose of the news-please bot?

The purpose of the news-please library is to serve as a data collection tool for research. It helps researchers compile comprehensive datasets of news articles to study topics like media framing or content trends. Unlike commercial crawlers, it is designed with academic needs in mind. For website owners, the bot does not provide a direct benefit like search traffic. However, the research it facilitates may contribute to a broader understanding of media coverage and news dissemination.

How do I block the news-please bot?

To prevent the news-please tool from scraping your website, you can add a disallow rule for it in your robots.txt file. This is the standard method for managing access for web crawlers and scrapers.

Add the following lines to your robots.txt file to block news-please:

User-agent: news-please
Disallow: /

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

Reverse IP lookup technique

To verify user-agent authenticity, you can use host linux command two times with the IP address of the requester.

```
> host IPAddressOfRequest
```
This command returns the reverse lookup hostname (e.g., 4.4.8.8.in-addr.arpa.).

> host ReverseDNSFromTheOutputOfFirstRequest

If the output matches the original IP address and the domain is associated with a trusted operator (e.g., ), 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.