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Pinterestbot (Pinterest): what it is and how to allow or block it

Updated · checked against the operator's documentation on

Pinterestbot is Pinterest's crawler that indexes pages for Pins and keeps Pin details current. Verify it by reverse DNS; it respects robots.txt, so block or allow it by name. Its robots.txt token is Pinterestbot.

Facts

Operator
Pinterest
Category
Social preview fetcher
robots.txt token
Pinterestbot
Honors robots.txt?
Yes, per Pinterest. Pinterest says Pinterestbot respects robots.txt and honors crawl delays of up to 1, treating larger values as 1. It reads robots.txt on the main domain only, not on subdomains.
User-agent example
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Pinterestbot/1.0; +https://www.pinterest.com/bot.html)
Official source
Pinterest Help: Pinterestbot
Compared with the source

What it is used for

Per Pinterest, Pinterestbot crawls public websites to index their content onto Pinterest, and scrapes the pages behind Pins to keep details such as price and title current and to remove broken links. Pinterest says it does not use this content to train its image generation model, Pinterest Canvas.

What happens if you block it

Pinterest can no longer index your pages or refresh Pin details such as price and title from them. Pinterest also says large crawl delays affect how your content is distributed and recommended.

Pinterest says its addresses change without notice and that requests from outside the US have no fixed range, so it recommends the DNS check over an IP range check.

Is it really Pinterestbot?

Anyone can send Pinterestbot as a user agent, so a log line proves nothing by itself. The way to tell is the requesting IP address.

How to allow or block Pinterestbot

Add one of these groups to the robots.txt at the root of your domain. A group that names the bot overrides a general User-agent: * group.

Allow Pinterestbot
User-agent: Pinterestbot
Allow: /
Block Pinterestbot
User-agent: Pinterestbot
Disallow: /

Does your site allow Pinterestbot today? The checker evaluates your robots.txt for this and every other bot.Check my site

What we see on this site

No request identifying as Pinterestbot has been recorded since 19 Oct, so there is nothing to show yet. We never fill this in with estimates.

Counts come from this site's own server; they hold no IP addresses or URLs, and a user agent is only a claim. See the bot traffic data and the methodology.

Questions about Pinterestbot

What is Pinterestbot?

Pinterest's crawler that indexes public websites for Pinterest and keeps the details behind Pins up to date. Per Pinterest, Pinterestbot crawls public websites to index their content onto Pinterest, and scrapes the pages behind Pins to keep details such as price and title current and to remove broken links. Pinterest says it does not use this content to train its image generation model, Pinterest Canvas.

Is Pinterestbot safe and legitimate?

The real Pinterestbot is a social preview fetcher run by Pinterest. A user-agent string is only a claim, though, so anyone can send it. Pinterest documents a reverse DNS lookup whose name must end in pinterest.com or pinterestcrawler.com, followed by a forward lookup that must return the same address.

Does Pinterestbot obey robots.txt?

Yes, per Pinterest. Pinterest says Pinterestbot respects robots.txt and honors crawl delays of up to 1, treating larger values as 1. It reads robots.txt on the main domain only, not on subdomains.

How do I block Pinterestbot?

Add a group to the robots.txt at the root of your domain: User-agent: Pinterestbot followed by Disallow: /. A group that names the bot overrides a general User-agent: * group.

Will blocking Pinterestbot hurt my Google rankings or AI visibility?

Not your Google rankings. Per Pinterest, it indexes content onto Pinterest, so a block affects how your pages show up on Pinterest.

Related bots

Other Social preview fetchers

All Social Preview Fetchers · Bot directory · Which bots to allow or block · robots.txt generator · See a page as a bot