Blackhole for Bad Bots vs TrustedSite

✨ 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! 🙂

Key benefits Show you’re trustworthy: Earn certifications to display TrustedSite trustmarks and let visitors know your site is one they can trust. Ease concerns: TrustedSite’s system of trustmarks and certifications is designed to alleviate the biggest concerns online shoppers have. Get more sales: Sites that have tested TrustedSite Certification have seen 2-30% more sales. Sell more with trust 92% of consumers have concerns when shopping at unfamiliar websites. Address the concerns that cost you sales and increase conversions at every stage of the buyer’s journey with TrustedSite Certification. How it works TrustedSite offers a suite of certifications that help to alleviate the most common concerns that people have when they shop online. Earn these certifications to display TrustedSite trustmarks throughout your site and show visitors that they can trust your business. Once you’ve installed the TrustedSite plugin, we’ll check your site for security issues and verify key contact information so we know your site is secure and your business is legitimate. Once you’ve passed our security scan and verified your contact information, you’ll earn your first two certifications: Certified Secure and Verified Business. With the TrustedSite free plan, you can then begin displaying the TrustedSite floating trustmark for up to 500 visits per month at no charge. When your visitors click on the trustmark, we’ll show them an on-site modal (available in 31 different languages). The modal displays a list of the certifications that you’ve earned and explains how you earned them—helping your visitors to continue shopping with confidence. Get Certification Pro Upgrade to increase your visit limit and get access to all of our certifications and trustmarks to increase sales: Issue-Free Orders: Show your business consistently delivers outstanding service with customer testimonials. Shopper Identity Protection: Protect customers for 90 days after their purchases with $100,000 identity theft protection. Trusted Reviews: Display the great reviews you’ve collected with ResellerRatings or Trustpilot. Data Protection: Show visitors that your login and checkout pages are secure. Spam-Free: Collect more emails by showing you don’t spam. More sales. Guaranteed. When A/B testing TrustedSite, top ecommerce sites have seen a significant increase in sales. carcovers.com: 3.2% increase over Norton Shopping Guarantee lensabl.com: 2.46% increase holabirdsports.com: 16% increase mountainhouse.com: 26.9% increase We offer a 30-day money back guarantee with all of our paid plans. If you don’t see an increase in conversions, we’ll give you your money back. Privacy TrustedSite uses Amazon Web Services as a CDN. TrustedSite is GDPR compliant and complies with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. View our full terms and privacy policy.