How to Block Bots of Competitor Analysis SEO Tools like Ahref,Semrush,Majestic,MOZ

Internet is evolving with data and relevant data is very much important for powerful information. SEO is changing very rapidly and its become more tool-centric than the content-centric. Many webmasters and digital agencies using competitor analysis SEO tools to tweak the search engine like Google, Bing, and spy on their competitors in the market. Which is nothing but a fabricated romance with search engine bots! 😀 .This situation creating demand to block bots of competitor analysis SEO tools from crawling your website.

The ranking is one of the major parameters every person trying to chase as they want to beat their competitor in this digital space. With the help of these tools, they can easily look at their competition, how they are ranking in Google with lots of parameters like backlinks, keywords, trust flow, spamming score, etc. We believe its 2 sided sword.  Good for an individual webmaster to analyze their own site but scary for the competitor. These tools not only expose your link building strategies but also content strategies, which is not good for the long run.

Competitor analysis tools like Ahref, Semrush, Majestic, Similarweb, MOZ & OpenSiteExplorer are very useful tools but because of these tools, privacy and digital strategies of every individual is getting exposed. None of the webmasters want to expose all their major details with anyone. That's why it's important to block their bots to play safely in this dynamic digital marketplace.

How to block BOTS of Competitor analysis tools like Ahref, Semrush, Majestic, MOZ, Similarweb & Open Site Explorer

By using the following method and rules you can completely hide your sites from showing up in these tools. It means your competitors will not get any idea about what strategies you are using and how you are ranking in Google etc.

Step 1:  Go to ROOT directory of your Webhosting and find .htaccess file.

PS: if it's not visible try to check file manager settings to "show all type of files".

Step 2: Edit .htaccess file and add below code at the beginning of the file.

SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*rogerbot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*exabot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*mj12bot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*dotbot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*gigabot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*ahrefsbot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*sitebot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*spbot.* bad_bot

Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=bad_bot

Step 3:  Save the .htaccess file.

After blocking the majority of bots, your site will not able to grant access to these competitor analysis tools and your upcoming data and strategies will not get exposed easily. But still, there is some catch as these product makers are really smart they don't want to ruin their business. If you block bots of competitor analysis SEO tools they are ready to find an alternative way to reach you :). It's better to use some link monitoring tools like LinkOkay to monitor your linkings instead of these tools.

They may introduce several anonymous bots that can easily get access to your site. It's important to keep updating that data if you are really concern about data and privacy of your digital strategies. Blocking bots can help you somewhat but its not a permanent solution as of now in this dark web.

Let us know your thoughts about blocking these bots is a good idea or not? Do you have any other alternative solutions to these? We are happy to listen to some great answers from your end. Hope this article helps you to block bots of competitor analysis SEO tools.