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GhostExplore

GoodBotVerifiedBOT

An aggregator service for websites powered by ghost.org Operated by Ghost Foundation.

GoodBot
Assessment
Aggregator
Category
BOT
Kind
1
Data sources
AI-generated summary, drawn from Cloudflare, operator docs, and community data

What is GhostExplore?

GhostExplore is the official discovery engine for the Ghost publishing platform, designed to maintain the explore.ghost.org directory. It performs lightweight GET and HEAD requests to fetch public metadata, RSS feeds, and ActivityPub information from Ghost-powered sites. By aggregating this data, the bot enables users to search for and discover independent newsletters and publications within the Ghost ecosystem.

Helpful — It is a transparent, rate-limited crawler operated by the Ghost platform to increase the visibility of independent publishers within their own ecosystem.

Identification

Bot name
GhostExplore
Operator
Ghost Foundation
Category
Aggregator
Kind
BOT
Verification
Verified bot
Cloudflare slug
ghostexplore
User-agent patterns
GhostExplore
User-agent string
GhostExplore/1.0 (+https://explore.ghost.org/bot)
Main use cases
RSS feed discoveryMetadata and icon synchronizationActivityPub profile indexing
Rated Sep 23, 2026 from public evidence

How we rated this bot

Verified by Cloudflare, which confirms who runs it, with no widespread reports of abuse.

Names itself honestly
Yes
Verified by Cloudflare
Yes
Says it follows robots.txt and opt-outs
Not stated
Ignores site rules
None found
Disguises itself or evades blocks
None found
Overloads sites
None found
How widely people complain
No complaint about this bot in the evidence
Reddit discussion
There is no Reddit discussion of this bot in the evidence

What we read

Why it crawls your site

The bot crawls to ensure that the Ghost Explore directory remains up-to-date with the latest content, icons, and social activity from public Ghost sites. It operates via queued background jobs rather than aggressive bursts, ensuring minimal impact on server performance. Site operators can verify the bot's identity via its documented user agent and can opt-out of this discovery process directly through their Ghost Admin settings.

Block or allow GhostExplore

Block it

Add a Disallow rule for GhostExplore in your robots.txt file. You can also block at the server level using your web server configuration or CDN firewall rules to filter requests matching the user-agent string.

# Block GhostExplore from crawling your entire site
User-agent: GhostExplore
Disallow: /

# Allow GhostExplore full access
User-agent: GhostExplore
Allow: /
Allow & verify

Ensure your robots.txt allows GhostExplore. Verify requests by checking the user-agent string.

Traffic & trends

Cloudflare Radar traffic

No Cloudflare traffic data available.

Google Trends interest

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Links & references

Ghost Foundation documentation
ghost.org
↗
Cloudflare Radar: GhostExplore
radar.cloudflare.com/traffic/bots/ghostexplore
↗

Data sources

This profile is compiled from the following sources.

CloudflareRadar
Last updated October 25, 2026

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