C# .NET: Determine if a Request is a Search Bot

Using the .NET Framework and ASP.NET, the best way to determine if an incoming web request is a search bot, we must look at the UserAgent string in the request header. The code below is a simple way to determine most bot requests. The user agent list can be updated to track more requests (http://www.useragentstring.com/pages/Crawlerlist/).

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public static bool IsRequestSearchBot()
{
	if (System.Web.HttpContext.Current != null && System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request != null)
	{
		string userAgent = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.UserAgent;
		if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(userAgent))
		{
			return false;
		}

		userAgent = userAgent.ToLower();

		string[] userAgents = new string[]
		{
			"googlebot",
			"bingbot",
			"msnbot",
			"yahoo! slurp",
			"baiduspider",
			"iaskspider",
			"ask jeeves"
		};				

		foreach (string agent in userAgents)
		{
			if (userAgent.Contains(agent))
			{
				return true;
			}
		}
	}

	return false;
}