Blackhole for Bad Bots is a WordPress app, with a 4.7 average rating from 148 reviews, as of Jul 14, 2026.
Blackhole for Bad Bots is a WordPress Plugin Directory app by Jeff Starr. With a rating of 4.7★ from 148 reviews.
AppRanks data: Blackhole for Bad Bots ranks #0 in Anti-spam on WordPress Plugin Directory, placing it in the top 1% of that category.
AppRanks verdict
Generated from live marketplace data — refreshed daily
Blackhole for Bad Bots is a highly rated WordPress app with a growing review traction. It is listed in the Anti-spam category on WordPress Plugin Directory, which AppRanks treats as the canonical taxonomy node for ranking and competitor comparison. 148 reviews put it in the early-traction tier — useful for early-stage stores willing to be on the leading edge. Early-traction review counts are sensitive to single launch periods or feature events, so a 30-day re-check before bigger commitments often resolves whether the trend is sustained. Paid-only pricing means evaluating fit on the marketplace listing or via the developer's documentation before installing. AppRanks tracks rating, review count, pricing tier, and category position daily — the figures on this page reflect the most recent scrape from the canonical WordPress Plugin Directory listing.
Pros
- +High average rating (4.7★) signals consistent merchant satisfaction
- +Published by Jeff Starr — established developer track record
Cons
- −No declared third-party integrations on the listing — verify compatibility with your existing tools before installing
Looking to switch from Blackhole for Bad Bots?
See Blackhole for Bad Bots's alternatives ranked by audit score, rating, and review velocity.
How Blackhole for Bad Bots works
Show full descriptionShow less
✨ Trap bad bots in a virtual black hole
Important: Do NOT use this plugin on sites with caching. Learn more »
👾 Bye bye bad bots..
Bad bots are the worst. They do all sorts of nasty stuff and waste server resources. The Blackhole plugin helps to stop bad bots and save precious resources for legit visitors.
👾 How does it work?
First the plugin adds a hidden trigger link to the footer of your pages. You then add a line to your robots.txt file that forbids all bots from following the hidden link. Bots that then ignore or disobey your robots rules will crawl the link and fall into the trap. Once trapped, bad bots are denied further access to your WordPress site.
I call it the “one-strike” rule: bots have one chance to obey your site’s robots.txt rule. Failure to comply results in immediate banishment. The best part is that the Blackhole only affects bad bots: human users never see the hidden link, and good bots obey the robots rules in the first place. Win-win! 🙂
✨ Add a blackhole trap to help stop bad bots
Important: Do NOT use this plugin on sites with caching. Learn more »
👾 Features
Easy to set up
Squeaky clean code
Focused and modular
Lightweight, fast and flexible
Built with the WordPress API
Works with other security plugins
Easy to reset the list of bad bots
Easy to delete any bot from the list
Regularly updated and “future proof”
Blackhole link includes “nofollow” attribute
Plugin options configurable via settings screen
Works silently behind the scenes to protect your site
Whitelists all major search engines to never block
Focused on flexibility, performance, and security
Email alerts with WHOIS lookup for blocked bots
Complete inline documentation via the Help tab
Provides setting to whitelist any IP addresses
Customize the message displayed to bad bots 😉
One-click restore the plugin default options
Does NOT use or require any .htaccess rules
Blackhole for Bad Bots protects your site against bad bots, spammers, scrapers, scanners, and other automated threats.
✨ Not using WordPress? Check out the standalone PHP version of Blackhole!
👾 Whitelist
By default, this plugin does NOT block any of the major search engines (user agents):
AOL.com
Baidu
Bingbot/MSN
DuckDuckGo
Googlebot
Teoma
Yahoo!
Yandex
These search engines (and all of their myriad variations) are whitelisted via user agent. So are a bunch of other “useful” bots. They always are allowed full access to your site, even if they disobey your robots.txt rules. This list can be customized in the plugin settings. For a complete list of whitelisted bots, visit the Help tab in the plugin settings (under “Whitelist Settings”).
✨ Check out Blackhole Pro and level up with advanced features!
👾 Exclusive Pro Features
Option to disable for logged-in users
Threshold control (number of allowed hits)
Custom email alerts
Custom messages for blocked bots
Custom redirect for blocked bots
Custom blackhole trigger links
Complete inline documentation
Block bots based on user agent
Block bots based on IP address
Whitelist/allow bots by user agent
Whitelist/allow bots by IP address
Redirect whitelisted bots
Set custom HTTP Status Code
Full-featured Bad Bot Log with paging, sorting, and field search
Manually add bad bots to the Bad Bot Log
Geo/IP location lookups for each bad bot
Logs number of blocked hits for each bot
..plus everything the free version can do and more.
✨ Learn more and get Blackhole Pro »
👾 Privacy
User Data: This plugin automatically blocks bad bots. When bad bots fall into the trap, their IP address, user agent, and other request data are stored in the WP database. No other user data is collected by this plugin. At any time, the administrator may delete all saved data via the plugin settings.
Services: This plugin does not connect to any third-party locations or services.
Cookies: This plugin does not set any cookies.
Credit: Header Image Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Blackhole for Bad Bots is developed and maintained by Jeff Starr, 15-year WordPress developer and book author.
👾 Support development
I develop and maintain this free plugin with love for the WordPress community. To show support, you can make a donation or purchase one of my books:
The Tao of WordPress
Digging into WordPress
.htaccess made easy
WordPress Themes In Depth
Wizard’s SQL Recipes for WordPress
And/or purchase one of my premium WordPress plugins:
BBQ Pro – Blazing fast WordPress firewall
Blackhole Pro – Automatically block bad bots
Banhammer Pro – Monitor traffic and ban the bad guys
GA Google Analytics Pro – Connect WordPress to Google Analytics
Head Meta Pro – Ultimate Meta Tags for WordPress
REST Pro Tools – Awesome tools for managing the WP REST API
Simple Ajax Chat Pro – Unlimited chat rooms
USP Pro – Unlimited front-end forms
Links, tweets and likes also appreciated. Thank you! 🙂
Category rankings
As of Jul 14, 2026- Anti-spam#0of 98Top 1%
- Blackhole#0of 1Top 1%
- Bots#0of 33Top 1%
- Honeypot#0of 22Top 1%
- Security#46of 666Top 7%
See 90-day rank history for each category
Track daily rank changes, category shifts, and position volatility.
Keyword rankings
Blackhole for Bad Bots ranks for 5 keywords across WordPress Plugin Directory. Here are the top 3:
- 1.chat botRank #6
- Rank #724
- Rank #829
Competitors & alternatives
Blackhole for Bad Bots doesn't have curated competitor matchups yet. Other tracked anti-spam apps on WordPress:
Where Blackhole for Bad Bots stands in the Anti-spam category
Blackhole for Bad Bots ranks #0 of 98 apps in the Anti-spam category, placing it in the top 1% of the listing.
Frequently asked questions
What is Blackhole for Bad Bots?
Blackhole for Bad Bots is an app for WordPress. It currently holds a 4.7-star rating from 148 merchant reviews, and AppRanks has been tracking its public marketplace data on the refresh cadence published in our methodology. It is listed under the Anti-spam category on AppRanks, where you can see its current category position, review-velocity trend, and how it compares against the top alternatives in the same space. Developed by Jeff Starr.