Troubleshooting
Bots Still Appearing in Analytics
Check protection is on
Confirm Enable Protection is on in Settings → ScraperBlock.
Check the bot is on a list
Look for the bot's user agent in the Default Bot List, or add it under Custom User-agents. Bots often change their user-agent strings.
Check per-page control
Protection is skipped on posts and pages where Disable protection for this page/post is ticked.
Check the log
Blocked requests appear on the Logs tab. If the bot isn't listed there, it wasn't matched.
A Legitimate Tool or Service Is Blocked
ScraperBlock blocks by user agent, so anything whose user agent contains a blocked name gets a 403 Forbidden - for example curl/, python-requests, HeadlessChrome, or link-preview bots such as facebookexternalhit, LinkedInBot and Slackbot-LinkExpanding.
- Turn protection off for the affected post or page with per-page control.
- For your own tools, developers can allow specific requests with the
scraperblock_bypass_requestfilter (see the Developer Reference). - Local WordPress requests (loopback and Plugin Check) are allowed automatically.
Htaccess Rules Not Written
Check file permissions
Make sure your .htaccess file is writable by WordPress.
Confirm Apache
.htaccess rules only work on Apache (or LiteSpeed with .htaccess support).
Save settings again
Rules are written when you save settings with .htaccess Blocking on, and removed when you turn it off or deactivate the plugin.