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

TweetmemeBot

TweetmemeBot is an intelligence-gathering web crawler now operated by the media monitoring company Meltwater. Its purpose is to collect and analyze public web content for Meltwater's media intelligence platform. The bot's activity is driven by the monitoring needs of Meltwater's clients, who use the data for brand tracking, sentiment analysis, and competitive intelligence.

What is TweetmemeBot?

TweetmemeBot is a web crawler operated by Meltwater, a media monitoring company. The bot was originally developed by DataSift, which was acquired by Meltwater. It is an intelligence-gathering crawler that collects and analyzes content from websites for media monitoring. The bot identifies itself with user-agent strings like Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; TweetmemeBot/3.0; +http://tweetmeme.com/). It is a traditional web crawler that gathers data to be processed later by Meltwater's analytics systems.

Why is TweetmemeBot crawling my site?

TweetmemeBot is crawling your website to collect content that may be relevant to Meltwater's media monitoring services. Its visit is likely because your site contains content that is being monitored by one of Meltwater's clients, such as news articles or blog posts that mention specific brands or products. The frequency of visits depends on the relevance of your content to these monitoring priorities. The crawling is part of a legitimate business operation and is considered authorized.

What is the purpose of TweetmemeBot?

The purpose of TweetmemeBot is to support Meltwater's media intelligence platform by gathering web content that helps clients track online mentions and analyze brand sentiment. The data it collects is used by companies to monitor their brand presence and measure the impact of their PR campaigns. For website owners, the bot's crawling provides no direct benefit, but it can increase your content's visibility among Meltwater's corporate clients. The bot is part of a commercial service, not a public search engine.

How do I block TweetmemeBot?

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

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

User-agent: TweetmemeBot
Disallow: /

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

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., Meltwater), 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.