# MediavineBot

Last updated: 2026-10-05

MediavineBot is the web bot Mediavine uses to check and read
publishers' websites. It mostly visits sites that work with us:

- sites that applied to join our ad network
- sites in our ad programs
- sites that use Grow by Mediavine, our tool that adds bookmarking,
  search, and recommendations to a publisher's site

MediavineBot doesn't crawl the open web.


## User agent

MediavineBot sends one of these user agents.

    Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MediavineBot/1.0; +https://publishers-verified.mediavine.com/bots/bots.txt)
    MediavineMetadataParser/1.0.0
    MediavineMetadataParser/1.0
    MediavineMetadataParser/7.16.0

Version numbers change over time. To match every request, look for a
user agent that contains "MediavineBot/" or starts with
"MediavineMetadataParser/".


## Why we visit your site

We visit your site for one of three reasons.

1. You applied to join Mediavine. We fetch your homepage and your
   ads.txt file to review your application.

2. You're in a Mediavine ad program. We:
   - check your ads.txt file, homepage, and privacy policy several
     times a day
   - check one of your recent pages if our ad script isn't on your
     homepage
   - read the titles, images, and last-updated dates of your
     most-visited and newest pages, for tools in your Mediavine
     dashboard
   - read your video feed once a day to import your videos, if you
     gave us one

3. You use Grow by Mediavine. We read the title, description, main
   image, and text of your pages, usually when your readers visit
   them. Grow uses them to show, recommend, and search your content.
   We also read your WordPress categories and check that Grow is
   installed. When a reader prints one of your recipes through Grow,
   we fetch the recipe's print page.

Some of our tools also check a link a publisher gives us, and that link
can point to any site. For example, a publisher can check whether a
page is ready for Google Discover, or tell us where their privacy
policy is. We fetch that page. For the Google Discover check, we also
fetch the page's main image and the site's robots.txt file.


## How MediavineBot behaves

MediavineBot only reads your site.

- It doesn't log in, submit forms, or buy anything.
- It sends plain HTTP requests and doesn't run JavaScript.
- It doesn't crawl your whole site. It fetches only the pages and
  files described above, and it follows redirects.


## How we use your content

We use your content only for the reasons above. We don't use it to
build a public search engine.


## How to verify our requests

To confirm a request came from us, check both of these:

1. The user agent contains "MediavineBot/" or starts with
   "MediavineMetadataParser/".
2. The source IP address is on our IP list. The list is plain text,
   with one IP range per line:
   https://publishers-verified.mediavine.com/bots/ips.txt

Most of our requests come from these addresses. If a request has our
user agent but comes from another address, email us and we'll tell you
whether it's ours.


## Contact us

Email bots-ops@mediavine.com to report a problem, ask us to stop
visiting your site, or ask a question. Tell us the date and time of the
request, the page it asked for, and the IP address it came from.