PocketParser

PocketParser is a specialized web crawler, or fetcher, for the 'read later' service Pocket. When a user saves content to their Pocket account, this bot visits the webpage to collect the metadata needed to create a preview card within the Pocket application. It identifies itself in server logs with the user-agent string PocketParser/2.0 (+https://getpocket.com/pocketparser_ua). Unlike more aggressive crawlers, PocketParser only visits pages when triggered by a user's action and focuses solely on gathering the information needed to generate an accurate preview, such as titles, images, and Open Graph tags.

The PocketParser bot is visiting your website because a user of the Pocket service has saved a link to your content. The bot is not systematically crawling your entire site; it is making a targeted visit to the specific URL that the user saved. The frequency of its visits is directly tied to how often users save your content to their Pocket accounts. This is a legitimate and authorized activity that represents genuine user interest in your content.

The purpose of PocketParser is to support Pocket's core service by enabling rich, visual previews of saved content. When an article is saved, the bot collects the metadata needed to create an engaging preview card with a title, image, and summary. This benefits both the user, by creating an organized and visually appealing reading list, and the content creator. For website owners, it ensures that your content is accurately represented in the Pocket interface, which can encourage return visits when users decide to read the saved content.

To prevent PocketParser from creating previews of your content when it is saved by users, you can add a disallow rule to your robots.txt file. This will cause links to your site to appear as plain text within the Pocket app.

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

User-agent: PocketParser
Disallow: /