Publisher controls
A list of names or addresses is only one input. A useful scraper policy starts with the resource you need to protect and the behavior causing a problem.
Begin with a concrete observation: a public catalog endpoint receiving excessive requests, repeated retrieval of an expensive page, or an automated client reaching a restricted area. Each situation can require a different response.
Measure behavior using the information you are authorized to inspect. Keep a baseline for legitimate use, including accessibility tools, integrations, and search crawlers. Automation alone does not establish that a request is harmful or unwanted.
Request frequency, paths, response patterns, and documented identity checks can contribute context. None should be treated as a universal fingerprint. Shared IP addresses and network changes make permanent address-only decisions particularly difficult to interpret.
A practical review asks what rule matched, what action followed, and whether a legitimate task was interrupted. Keep enough information to answer those questions without unnecessarily retaining full URLs or visitor identifiers.
Choose a response around the measured problem. Options might include a resource-specific rate limit, cached responses, authentication for private content, or a temporary block. Availability depends on your hosting environment and application.
Document the owner, reason, duration, and rollback condition for each rule. When a policy is temporary, give it a review date. A rule added during an incident can otherwise outlive both the problem and the evidence supporting it.
Repeat representative tasks after a change and inspect both accepted and rejected requests. Fewer requests are not automatically evidence of a better result if important users were excluded. Provide a route for reporting access problems.
For cooperative crawler instructions, read AI bot policy basics. For the difference between these instructions and enforcement, see the complete bot-control fieldnote.
A client controls its user-agent claim. Treat it as a signal and verify identity where an operator provides a documented method.
Set a review condition appropriate to the evidence and the problem. Temporary controls deserve explicit expiry or reassessment.
From Ad Block List Lab
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