Blocking all bots except a few with Nginx

Question

I would like to block all the http_user_agents which identify as bots but allow Googlebot when I put the following code:

map $http_user_agent $bad_bot {
defa         


        

Answer 1

Simply check $http_user_agent against your $bad_bot list and return HTTP 403 if it's in your blacklist:

location / {
   if ($http_user_agent ~ (libwww|Wget|LWP|damnBot|BBBike|java|spider|crawl) ) {
       return 403;
   }
}

Note: ~ in the if block performs case-sensitive match. If you want to make your blacklist case-insensitive, use ~* instead of ~.

Answer 2

Here my logic for nginx

map $http_user_agent $limit_bots {
     default 0;
     ~*(google|bing|yandex|msnbot) 1;
     ~*(AltaVista|Googlebot|Slurp|BlackWidow|Bot|ChinaClaw|Custo|DISCo|Download|Demon|eCatch|EirGrabber|EmailSiphon|EmailWolf|SuperHTTP|Surfbot|WebWhacker) 1;
     ~*(Express|WebPictures|ExtractorPro|EyeNetIE|FlashGet|GetRight|GetWeb!|Go!Zilla|Go-Ahead-Got-It|GrabNet|Grafula|HMView|Go!Zilla|Go-Ahead-Got-It) 1;
     ~*(rafula|HMView|HTTrack|Stripper|Sucker|Indy|InterGET|Ninja|JetCar|Spider|larbin|LeechFTP|Downloader|tool|Navroad|NearSite|NetAnts|tAkeOut|WWWOFFLE) 1;
     ~*(GrabNet|NetSpider|Vampire|NetZIP|Octopus|Offline|PageGrabber|Foto|pavuk|pcBrowser|RealDownload|ReGet|SiteSnagger|SmartDownload|SuperBot|WebSpider) 1;
     ~*(Teleport|VoidEYE|Collector|WebAuto|WebCopier|WebFetch|WebGo|WebLeacher|WebReaper|WebSauger|eXtractor|Quester|WebStripper|WebZIP|Wget|Widow|Zeus) 1;
     ~*(Twengabot|htmlparser|libwww|Python|perl|urllib|scan|Curl|email|PycURL|Pyth|PyQ|WebCollector|WebCopy|webcraw) 1;
 } 

location / {
  if ($limit_bots = 1) {
    return 403;
  }
}