TikTokSpider
ByteDance · Live retrieval · robots.txt token tiktokspider
0.8% of 30,177 measured domains disallow tiktokspider in robots.txt at the site root. Separately, and independently of robots.txt, 17.4% of 30,187 reachable domains refuse an AI crawler user agent at the network edge on two consecutive probes from different locations - a refusal the site's own robots.txt does not declare and its owner often has not chosen.
Measured 2026-10-06 by direct request to every domain in the corpus. Method: how this is measured. Reuse under CC BY 4.0 with attribution.
Cite as: Crawl Census, "TikTokSpider blocking rate", measured 2026-10-06. https://crawlcensus.com/bot/tiktokspider
What it is definition
Fetches shared URLs for TikTok link previews and feeds; not expected to follow robots.txt.
TikTokSpider is operated by ByteDance and classified here as live retrieval. These agents fetch a single URL because a user asked about it. Disallowing one means the assistant answers from an older copy or from someone else's summary instead of the live page. Several are documented as not bound by robots.txt, because the request is user-initiated rather than a crawl.
Disallowing tiktokspider stops the fetch that happens when a user asks TikTok link previews about one of your URLs. The answer still gets written, from an older copy or from a third party's description of the page, and you no longer control what it says.
- robots.txt token
- tiktokspider
- Operator
- ByteDance
- Purpose
- Live retrieval
- Honors robots.txt
- no
- Documentation
- https://knownagents.com/agents/tiktokspider
Identity on the wire exact string
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 5.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; TikTokSpider; ttspider-feedback@tiktok.com)curl -A 'Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 5.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; TikTokSpider; ttspider-feedback@tiktok.com)' https://example.com/Replace the host with your own. A 403, a challenge page or an empty body means the edge is blocking the agent whatever robots.txt says.
How to allow it, how to block it robots.txt
User-agent: tiktokspider
Allow: /Absent any rule, the agent is already allowed, so this group only matters when your * group disallows something. Naming the agent replaces the * group for it entirely, so repeat here every disallow you still want to apply to it.
User-agent: tiktokspider
Disallow: /Disallowing tiktokspider stops the fetch that happens when a user asks TikTok link previews about one of your URLs. The answer still gets written, from an older copy or from a third party's description of the page, and you no longer control what it says.
Sites that block it 60 shown
See every measured domain that blocks TikTokSpider
This list is served from a cache rebuilt just now. It is discarded the moment a rescan records a policy change for this agent, so a site that has just changed its robots.txt will drop off it within one scan rather than waiting for the cache to expire.
Compare ByteDance
ByteDance runs 2 agents in this registry, and they do different jobs. Blocking one says nothing about the others.
Common questions answered
Does blocking TikTokSpider remove me from TikTok link previews?
Partly. TikTokSpider fetches a page only when a user asks about it, so disallowing it does not delist you from TikTok link previews. It does mean the answer is composed without your live page, from a stale copy or a third-party summary. ByteDance documents this agent as not bound by robots.txt, so the disallow is a request rather than a control; see the blocking section for the edge rule that is.
How do I verify TikTokSpider requests are genuine?
ByteDance publishes neither reverse DNS names nor address ranges for TikTokSpider, so a request carrying this user agent cannot be authenticated. The string is trivially spoofed and is routinely reused by unrelated scrapers. Treat it as a hint, rate-limit by source address, and do not grant it access you would not grant an anonymous client.
Check your own site free
See whether your robots.txt admits TikTokSpider today, and whether your edge agrees with it.