SEFcastSiteReader

If you found SEFcastSiteReader in your server logs, this page explains what it is, what it reads and how to stop it. It is operated by SEFCAST LTD, the company behind SEFcast.

1. What SEFcastSiteReader is

SEFcastSiteReader is SEFcast's own web fetcher. It reads a site's home page, web manifest and icons when a SEFcast user previews or adds that site in SEFcast, and the home page and icons of the competitor sites shown in a user's project. SEFcast uses what it reads to show the site's name, language and icon, and to draft a short profile of the site and keyword suggestions for that user; for this, the text of the home page is sent to an AI model. It is not a search engine crawler: it does not follow the links on your site or build an index of it.

2. How it identifies itself

Every request carries this user agent:

Mozilla/5.0 SEFcastSiteReader/1.0 (+https://sefcast.com/bot)

The token to use in robots.txt is SEFcastSiteReader.

3. What it fetches, and how often

• Only public pages, over HTTP or HTTPS.
• A few files each time: your home page, your web manifest and the icon files they point to (or /favicon.ico and /apple-touch-icon.png).
• Your home page is read whenever a SEFcast user previews or adds your site, so a site that several users add is read several times.
• Your icon is stored once read and is read again only when the stored copy expires, 7 to 30 days later. A read that failed may be retried sooner.
• It does not log in, fill in forms or try to reach anything that is not public.

4. robots.txt

Today SEFcastSiteReader does not read or apply your robots.txt when it reads your home page or icons for a SEFcast user. SEFcast's free site checks, which are not live yet, will honour Disallow rules for the token SEFcastSiteReader when they launch. To stop the reads described above now, block the user agent (section 5).

5. How to block it

Block requests whose user agent contains "SEFcastSiteReader" in your firewall or server configuration. This stops every request SEFcastSiteReader makes.

If your site refuses SEFcastSiteReader, or shows its content only with JavaScript, SEFcast may read your home page through a third-party page-reading service instead, which uses its own user agent. Email us with your domain (section 6) if you do not want this.

You can also add these lines to the robots.txt at the root of your domain. They will apply to SEFcast's free site checks once those launch:

User-agent: SEFcastSiteReader
Disallow: /

6. Contact

Questions, or a problem with how SEFcastSiteReader reads your site? Email us with your domain and we will look into it.