VarileadBot
Draft: some company details are still being finalised and this document is awaiting legal review.
If you found VarileadBot in your website's logs, this page explains what it is and how to stop it.
What it does
Varilead is a tool that web designers use to research local businesses. When a Varilead user looks into a business, VarileadBot reads that business's website: robots.txt, the homepage, and a handful of other pages (at most about ten) such as Services, About and Contact. It also takes one phone-sized screenshot of the homepage. It checks things like whether the site has a contact form, a quote button and working HTTPS, and looks for business contact details. It doesn't fill in forms, log in, or follow links off your site.
How it behaves
- It follows your
robots.txt, includingCrawl-delay(up to 5 seconds). - It waits between requests to the same site and visits only when a user asks about that business.
- It never tries to reach private networks or anything other than public web pages.
How it identifies itself
Page requests use this user agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; VarileadBot/1.0; +https://varilead.com/bot)
Screenshots use a mobile browser string, so your site shows its phone layout, with our name added:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 17_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/15E148 VarileadBot/1.0 (+https://varilead.com/bot)
How to block it
Add this to your robots.txt. Varilead reads it before every visit, and changes take effect within an hour:
User-agent: VarileadBot Disallow: /
Contact
To report a problem with VarileadBot, write to abuse@varilead.com. To have your email address removed from Varilead, use the removal form.