CriticDB Bot & Publisher

How our review crawler identifies itself, how to whitelist it, and how WordPress outlets can skip crawling entirely with the CriticDB Publisher plugin.

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WordPress 5.9+PHP 7.4+Free for outlets

Our crawler

CriticDB indexes video-game reviews from outlets across the web. Our crawler identifies itself with this User-Agent: 

CriticDBBot/1.0 (+https://criticdb.com/bot)

It fetches review pages and feeds only, at low volume (typically a few requests per hour per site), from the IP address 137.184.204.126. It respects robots.txt rules for the CriticDBBot user-agent — to stop it crawling your site entirely, add: 

User-agent: CriticDBBot
Disallow: /

Whitelisting CriticDBBot

If your site uses bot protection (Cloudflare, WAFs, security plugins), our crawler may be blocked with a 403 and your reviews won't appear on CriticDB. Allowing either the User-Agent CriticDBBot or the IP 137.184.204.126 fixes this.

The most reliable method is an IP Access Rule:

  1. Log in to the Cloudflare dashboard and select your domain.
  2. Go to Security → WAF → Tools.
  3. Under IP Access Rules, enter 137.184.204.126, choose the action Allow, scope This website, and add a note like CriticDB review crawler.

Alternatively, allow by User-Agent with a WAF custom rule:

  1. Go to Security → WAF → Custom rules → Create rule.
  2. Set Field to User Agent, Operator to contains, Value to CriticDBBot.
  3. Set the action to Skip and tick the protections to skip (remaining custom rules, rate limiting, and Super Bot Fight Mode if your plan shows it).
  4. Deploy the rule.

Note: on the Cloudflare Free plan, Bot Fight Mode cannot be bypassed by custom rules — if it's enabled (Security → Bots) and blocking us, use the IP Access Rule method above, which takes precedence.

Wordfence: go to Wordfence → All Options → Advanced Firewall Options and add 137.184.204.126 to Allowlisted IP addresses that bypass all rules.

Sucuri / other WAFs: add the same IP to the allowlist, or allow the CriticDBBot user-agent if your firewall supports user-agent rules.

After whitelisting, reply to our outreach message if we contacted you and we'll re-run the crawler and confirm your reviews are coming through. Not on CriticDB yet? Create an account and apply for your Outlet to be included. You can also check your access logs for CriticDBBot requests returning 200.

CriticDB Publisher for WordPress — no crawling needed

If your site runs WordPress, you can skip crawling entirely. The CriticDB Publisher plugin sends your reviews to CriticDB directly:

  • New reviews are pushed automatically when you publish.
  • A one-time back-catalog sync submits your existing review history in batches — safe to re-run, no duplicates.
  • An editor panel lets you tag the exact game (searching the CriticDB database, covers included), and flag games we don't have yet so we add them.
  • Scores are sent in your own scale (out of 5, 10, 100, stars, letter grades, or unscored) and normalized correctly on our side; your original score format is always displayed.
  • Author bylines are matched to CriticDB author pages; new writers get a page created automatically.

Requirements

WordPress 5.9 or newer, PHP 7.4 or newer, and an API key issued by CriticDB. Keys are issued to outlets accepted onto CriticDB — create an account and apply for your Outlet to be included.

Please use the application form

PLEASE, do not email us asking to be added to CriticDB. Create an account and apply for your Outlet to be included. We will rarely reply to these types of e-mails, the application system exists to maintain transparency and stick to a process.

Installation

  1. 1Download the plugin (zip).
  2. 2In WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the zip, then Install Now and Activate.
  3. 3Open Settings → CriticDB, paste your API key and press Test connection — you should see your outlet's name. Your score scale is applied automatically from what CriticDB has on file.
  4. 4Select the categories or tags that mark your review posts. Save, then pick your score field — the plugin auto-detects common review plugins and lists the custom fields found on your recent reviews.
  5. 5Optional: press Sync back-catalog to submit your existing published reviews. Progress is shown and the sync can be safely resumed or repeated.
  6. 6Publish reviews as normal. The CriticDB panel in the post editor shows each review's submission status, and lets you confirm the game and adjust the score, author, or summary for that post if needed.

What we store

Each submission contains the review's URL, title, game, score, author byline, publication date, and a short summary (your excerpt or the review's opening lines). We link back to the full review on your site — CriticDB never republishes review text. To have your reviews removed or your key deactivated, use the contact page.