What Buffer Link Preview does
BufferLinkPreviewBot fetches pages when Buffer users share a URL, so they can see a rich preview with the page's title, description, and thumbnail before posting. It reads only preview-related elements such as Open Graph and Twitter Card metadata, images, and the site's robots.txt, and it accesses only publicly available content without attempting to bypass authentication. Requests identify themselves with the user agent BufferLinkPreviewBot/1.0 plus X-BufferLinkPreviewBot headers, and Buffer states the bot rate-limits its requests. Buffer also publishes the bot's egress IP ranges and a machine-readable descriptor at scraper.buffer.com/about/bots/link-preview-bot.json.
How to control Buffer Link Preview
Target Buffer Link Preview in your robots.txt with the BufferLinkPreviewBot token. Rules apply per bot, so you can allow this one while blocking others, or the reverse.
Allow Buffer Link Preview
User-agent: BufferLinkPreviewBot
Allow: /Block Buffer Link Preview
User-agent: BufferLinkPreviewBot
Disallow: /Buffer states the bot honors robots.txt directives and publishes its egress IP ranges, so requests can be verified by IP as well as by user agent.
How to identify Buffer Link Preview
Temso identifies Buffer Link Previewtraffic by matching the request's User-Agent header against this pattern. User-agent strings can be spoofed, so treat a match as an indication, not proof.
BufferLinkPreviewBotBuffer Link Preview FAQ
What is Buffer Link Preview?
Buffer Link Preview (BufferLinkPreviewBot) is the fetcher Buffer uses to build link previews, retrieving a shared page's title, description, and thumbnail when a user adds a URL to a post. It identifies itself with the user agent BufferLinkPreviewBot/1.0 and dedicated X-BufferLinkPreviewBot request headers.
How do I block Buffer Link Preview?
Add a robots.txt group with "User-agent: BufferLinkPreviewBot" followed by "Disallow: /"; Buffer's documentation states the bot honors robots.txt directives. Buffer also publishes the bot's egress IP ranges, so you can additionally filter it at the firewall level.
About Operational Bots
Monitoring, security scanning, link previews, webhooks, and feed fetchers: the utility traffic that keeps integrations and shared links working.
Most of this traffic is service-critical or user-triggered. Webhooks and previews don't follow robots.txt, and blocking them tends to break things you rely on.
