How to Block Pingdom

Complete guide to blocking Pingdom (SolarWinds) from crawling your website using robots.txt, server configuration, and Switch workflows.

Operated by SolarWindsMonitoring

Should You Block Pingdom?

Not recommended: Pingdom is a monitoring service. If it's configured for your site, blocking it will prevent you from receiving uptime alerts.

Only block if this monitoring traffic is not yours and is coming from another party.

Blocking Methods

1robots.txt

High for cooperative crawlers

Add a Disallow rule for Pingdom's user-agent string in your robots.txt file. This is the standard, cooperative method that well-behaved crawlers respect.

2Server-side UA filtering

High

Configure your web server (nginx, Apache, Cloudflare) to reject requests matching Pingdom's user-agent patterns. This blocks at the network level before your application processes the request.

3Switch Journey Workflows

Highest — granular, real-time control

Create a custom journey in Switch that detects Pingdom and routes it to a block action, challenge, redirect, or modified content — without touching your server configuration.

robots.txt — Block Pingdom

Add the following to your robots.txt file (at the root of your domain) to block Pingdom:

User-agent: Pingdom
Disallow: /

User-agent: pingdom
Disallow: /

robots.txt — Allow with Restrictions

Alternatively, allow Pingdom on most pages while blocking specific directories:

User-agent: Pingdom
Disallow: /private/
Allow: /

User-agent: pingdom
Disallow: /private/
Allow: /

Pingdom User-Agent Strings

Use these patterns to identify Pingdom in your server logs or firewall rules:

Pingdom
pingdom

Frequently Asked Questions

Does blocking Pingdom affect my Google search rankings?

No. Blocking Pingdom does not affect your Google search rankings. Only blocking Googlebot impacts Google Search visibility.

Does Pingdom respect robots.txt?

Yes, Pingdom respects robots.txt directives. Adding a Disallow rule for its user-agent will prevent it from crawling blocked paths.

Can I allow Pingdom on some pages but not others?

Yes. Use robots.txt to disallow specific directories, or use Switch journey workflows for granular page-level control with conditional logic.

Go beyond robots.txt

Switch detects Pingdom in real-time and lets you build custom journey workflows — block, challenge, redirect, or serve modified content. No server changes required.

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