# UsefulShelfBot

> What the bot is, when it visits your site, what it checks during review and badge verification, and how to control it.

Canonical: https://usefulshelf.co/bot

UsefulShelfBot fetches pages of apps listed on UsefulShelf, and pages people submit to the free indexability checker.

## User agent

UsefulShelfBot/1.0 (+https://usefulshelf.co/bot)

## When it visits

- Once when an app is submitted, to read its title, Open Graph image, icon and page text for review.

- When a maker clicks Verify badge or calls the verify_badge MCP tool. Free with badge listings need a visible badge or text credit linking to their listing.

- Daily at 03:00 UTC, to recheck badges on live free badge listings. Featured and nofollow listings are excluded.

- When someone runs the indexability checker on a URL (one page plus robots.txt and sitemap.xml).

## What it does

- Fetches one HTML page. It does not run JavaScript or follow links.

- Follows up to 5 redirects and gives up after 10 seconds.

- Respects robots.txt. To block it, add `User-agent: UsefulShelfBot` and `Disallow: /`.

## Badge verification

Install the badge or text credit from your dashboard on the page you submitted. It must be visible in the HTML returned by your server, with a direct link to your listing. You may mark the link nofollow, sponsored or ugc. Verification checks visibility and destination, without requiring ranking credit. Existing badges continue to work. We check on submission, when you request verification, and on the daily schedule. Network errors, blocked requests and HTTP errors are retried on a later run; they do not establish that a badge was removed. Featured and free nofollow listings do not need a badge.

Keep the badge or text credit visible on your submitted page while using the free badge option. You may add nofollow, sponsored or ugc to the badge link; verification checks its destination and visibility, not ranking credit. UsefulShelfBot runs daily automated checks. A missing badge makes this listing private without advance warning until restored and verified. You can instead choose a free listing without a badge or Featured for $9 once. Featured requires confirmed payment. Featured and badge-verified free listings use dofollow website links; free listings without a badge use nofollow.

These are automated HTML checks using the user agent above, not AI classification. If your site blocks our bot, allow it before requesting verification.

## How review works

The page text goes to a classifier that judges whether the site is a useful, working app. Clear cases are approved right away. Approved apps publish after badge verification, confirmed payment, or selection of the free without badge option. Low-effort, placeholder, adult, gambling, crypto and spam sites are rejected automatically. Uncertain classifications are not approved. Unreadable websites and classifier outages stay private; they can be retried from My tools or MCP, or reviewed manually.