I was analyzing traffic logs and noticed that my sites get a lot of connections from superfeedr.com bots. I know that superfeedr crawls RSS feeds but I am getting concerned when I see a new connection every few minutes from different IP addresses... After a bit of browsing I learned that superfeedr is associated with IFTTT (at least that's what superfeedr's Twitter guy claims). I do have IFTTT trigger rules for RSS updates enabled, so this can explain this unwanted attention. Anyway, I am wondering if allowing these superfeedr bots is a good idea... we had few cases in the past when the new content was stolen from our sites before it got indexed by G. This is a worst case scenario - you spend time and/or money preparing new posts and then this content gets stolen and in some cases indexed prior, so you end up being treated by G as plagiarist. Apparently, Superfeedr could be a perfect mechanism for stealing content... Should just I treat it similarly to semalt and others referral spam bots and block using .htaccess and WordFence plugin? Any feedback/experience with these superfeedr bots is appreciated.
It's safe to block it. If they're all coming from a specific IP range that would probably be the easiest way to block it. What sorts of IPs are you seeing?
I didn't check loacations but, but according to one of the logs, there is at least 10 different IPs for this bot just this morning. They are not from the same subnet/range, so it is difficult to block by IP, will have to use pattern match if decide to block it (still unsure).