WatchmanProbe

Identify a request

WatchmanProbe sends the following User-Agent:

A User-Agent can be copied by another client; it is not proof of ownership on its own.

A verified source IP list has not been published yet. Contact us to confirm the source of a request before granting an access exception.

Why we visit a website

• Domain snapshots: a visitor submits a domain through our free website check. WatchmanProbe measures its HTTP response and response time.
• Snapshot reports: when a 24-hour report is collecting, the service schedules repeat checks approximately every five minutes. Queue scheduling can delay execution.
• Website validation: Watchman Tower also uses this identity to validate websites in its business discovery workflow. Public page titles, language, navigation labels, and industry signals may be extracted and stored for that workflow.

These requests are not all initiated by the owner of the destination website.

Request behavior

WatchmanProbe uses HTTP GET, accepts response content, follows up to three redirects, and sets a ten-second request timeout. It reads HTML to extract page metadata; industry classification can include semantic analysis. It does not execute page JavaScript or solve browser challenges in this request path.

Request frequency depends on the workflow. The five-minute snapshot report schedule is not a universal rate limit across all Watchman Tower services.

The current WatchmanProbe request path does not automatically fetch or enforce robots.txt directives. Website operators can contact us about exclusion requests or unwanted traffic.

Other Watchman Tower traffic

WT-Umbra/1.0

Used by separate WordPress detection and favicon requests, including checks associated with a domain snapshot.

WatchmanTower-BusinessBot/1.0

Used by separate business discovery crawlers. It is not the WatchmanProbe identity.

Regional monitoring checks

Monitoring edges use configured request headers and add a region header. Their User-Agent can vary; a request from an edge is not automatically a WatchmanProbe request. HTTP checks use HEAD or GET and may perform verification attempts.

Contact the operator

For request identification, access issues, or exclusion requests, email [email protected]. Include the affected domain, UTC timestamp, source IP, User-Agent, and a request or Cloudflare Ray ID if available. Do not send passwords or access tokens.

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