NewsNow bot

The NewsNow bot is the web crawler for the real-time news aggregation service NewsNow. The service operates several regional editions, making it a global news monitoring platform. The bot functions as a specialized search spider, scanning publisher websites for headlines and articles, which it then automatically categorizes and files into the appropriate newsfeeds. It identifies itself in server logs with the user-agent string NewsNow.

The NewsNow bot is visiting your site to scan for news content to include in its aggregation service. It is specifically looking for headlines and articles to categorize for its topical newsfeeds. The bot visits sites that are part of its publisher network or those it has identified as potential news sources. The frequency of visits depends on how often you publish new content. The crawling is generally considered authorized if a site has joined the NewsNow publisher network or its robots.txt file permits access.

The purpose of the NewsNow bot is to support the NewsNow news aggregation platform. The platform collects headlines from numerous sources and organizes them into topical feeds, providing users with a centralized place to access current news. For publishers, NewsNow offers the benefit of increased visibility and traffic. By having your content featured on the platform, you can reach a broader audience interested in your specific topic areas, making the service a valuable distribution channel.

To prevent the NewsNow bot from accessing 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.

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

User-agent: NewsNow
Disallow: /