# What Bots Does answer.cloud Track?

> Canonical source: [What Bots Does answer.cloud Track?](https://ai.answer.cloud/pages/what-bots-does-answer-cloud-track/)

answer.cloud tracks a comprehensive set of automated bots to help users monitor and manage non-human activity on their websites. This article outlines how bots are detected, provides an overview of the tracked bots, and explains how to access the official list.

answer.cloud monitors a wide variety of web bots, including search engine crawlers, AI agents, social media scrapers, and other automated tools. Tracking these bots helps users understand and control automated access to their websites.

## Overview of Bot Detection in answer.cloud

- **Detection Methods:**
  - Uses both the [DeviceDetector](https://github.com/podigee/device_detector) library and custom pattern matching for accurate identification.
  - Bot detection is applied both server-side and in client-side analytics scripts.
- **Transparency:**
  - The complete list of monitored bots is maintained in the open-source [`robots.json`](https://github.com/ai-robots-txt/ai.robots.txt/blob/main/robots.json) file.
  - This list is updated regularly and is open to community contributions.

## Categories of Tracked Bots

Bots are grouped by their primary purpose:

| Category  | Example Bots                 | Description                          |
|-----------|-----------------------------|--------------------------------------|
| AI        | OpenAI GPTBot, Claude       | Large language model and AI crawlers |
| Search    | Googlebot, Bingbot          | Major search engine crawlers         |
| Social    | Facebook, Twitterbot        | Social media and preview scrapers    |
| Crawler   | AhrefsBot, SemrushBot, MJ12bot, Unknown Bot | General web crawlers and scrapers     |

## List of Tracked Bots

The following bots are explicitly tracked by answer.cloud:

- **AI & Large Language Model Bots**
  - OpenAI GPTBot (`gptbot`)
  - OpenAI SearchBot (`oai-searchbot`)
  - Claude / Anthropic (`claude`, `anthropic`)
  - Perplexity AI (`perplexitybot`)
- **Major Search Engines**
  - Googlebot (`googlebot`)
  - Bingbot (`bingbot`)
  - DuckDuckBot (`duckduckbot`)
  - Baiduspider (`baiduspider`)
  - YandexBot (`yandex`)
- **Social & Scraper Bots**
  - Facebook (`facebookexternalhit`, `meta-externalagent`)
  - Twitterbot (`twitterbot`)
  - LinkedInBot (`linkedinbot`)
- **Other Crawlers**
  - AhrefsBot (`ahrefsbot`)
  - SemrushBot (`semrushbot`)
  - MJ12bot (`mj12bot`)
  - Unknown Bot (`bot`, `spider`, `crawler`)

## How Bot Data Is Used in Analytics

For sites with analytics enabled, answer.cloud tracks bot activity using a browser script. This script checks the browser's user agent string for known bot patterns and logs the following data:

- Whether the visitor is a bot (`is_bot`)
- Detected bot name (`bot_name`)

This information is sent alongside regular analytics data, allowing for more accurate reporting and filtering of non-human traffic.