About ChangeGistBot

ChangeGistBot is the program that checks public web pages for ChangeGist customers, so they hear when a page they care about changes. If you've seen it in your server logs, this page explains what it does.

How it identifies itself

Every visit includes ChangeGistBot and a link to this page in its user agent, so you can always tell it apart from a person.

How it behaves

• It only visits pages that are public. It never logs in, fills in forms or buys anything.
• It visits each watched page on a schedule, usually between once an hour and once a day.
• It never tries to solve CAPTCHAs or get around tools that block automated visitors. If a site blocks it, it stops.
• On large platforms that limit automated access, it visits even less often and spaces visits out, and it pauses completely for a day if the site signals it's visiting too much.
• It keeps a copy of the page's visible text only to tell the customer what changed. Images and files aren't downloaded.

Website owners: asking us to stop

If you own a website and don't want ChangeGistBot to visit it, contact us and choose “I own a website and want ChangeGist to stop visiting it”, or email [email protected] from an address at your domain. Once we've added your site to our block list, we stop checking it for every customer and don't let anyone add it again.