Bots & user agents

IsonAI operates two automated agents. They have different purposes, so site owners can control each one separately.

IsonSearchBot

IsonSearchBot builds the index behind Ison Search. It reads robots.txt for each host and applies the IsonSearchBot group (or *), including Disallow and Crawl-delay.

To stop it from crawling your site:

User-agent: IsonSearchBot
Disallow: /

Its crawl rate, verification and removal requests are described at search.isonai.com/bot.

IsonAI-User

IsonAI-User supports user actions in IsonAI. When a user asks IsonAI a question or asks it to read, summarize, or analyze a specific link, IsonAI may visit the relevant page with this agent to answer, and it shows a link to the source in its response.

• It is used only for actions that a user starts in IsonAI.
• It is not used to crawl the web automatically.
• It is not used to build or rank the Ison Search index.

Because these requests are made on behalf of a user, robots.txt rules may not apply. To stop IsonAI-User from reaching your site, block requests whose User-Agent contains IsonAI-User, or contact us.

Verifying requests

Both agents support HTTP Message Signatures (Web Bot Auth). Signed requests carry a Signature-Agent header that names where the public keys are published:

• IsonSearchBot: Signature-Agent is "https://search.isonai.com", with public keys in the IsonSearchBot key directory.
• IsonAI-User: Signature-Agent is "https://www.isonai.com", with public keys in the IsonAI-User key directory.

Signing is being rolled out gradually. Unsigned requests can still be recognized by their User-Agent and, for IsonSearchBot, by its published IP addresses.

IsonAI-User does not use a fixed, published IP range, so verify its signature rather than the IP address.

Contact

For questions about either agent, email hello@epithre.com.

Last verified: 2026-10-17