Buffer Link Preview Bot: About Our Bot
What is Buffer Link Preview Bot?
Buffer Scraper is a legitimate web crawler operated by Buffer, a social media management platform used by millions of businesses and creators worldwide. Our scraper helps Buffer users create better social media posts by generating rich previews when they share links.
Why We Need Access
When Buffer users share links in their social media posts, our scraper helps create engaging previews by:
- Generating link previews - showing the title, description, and thumbnail image
- Enabling image embedding - allowing users to include images from external links
- Improving content discovery - helping users see what they're sharing before posting
Our Commitment to Respectful Crawling
- We identify ourselves clearly as "BufferLinkPreviewBot"
- We respect robots.txt directives
- We implement rate limiting to avoid overwhelming servers
- We only access publicly available content
- We provide clear documentation and contact information
Bot Identification
Here's how to identify our bot in your server logs and security systems:
Name
BufferLinkPreviewBot
User Agent (Short)
BufferLinkPreviewBot
Full User Agent
BufferLinkPreviewBot/1.0 (+https://scraper.buffer.com/about/bots/link-preview-bot)
Documentation URL
https://scraper.buffer.com/about/bots/link-preview-bot
IP Addresses
The scraper operates from the following IP addresses:
- 3.213.140.44/32
- 52.22.148.168/32
- 52.3.218.210/32
- 54.235.34.237/32
- 3.220.253.227/32
- 3.224.33.156/32
- 52.87.69.215/32
- 54.211.190.68/32
Respectful Crawling
Buffer Scraper is designed to be respectful of websites and their resources:
- Uses a clear, identifiable user agent
- Includes proper headers for transparency
- Respects robots.txt directives
- Implements rate limiting and respectful delays
- Provides documentation and contact information
What We Access
Our bot only accesses publicly available information from your website:
- Page titles and descriptions - to create link previews
- Images and thumbnails - to show visual previews
- Open Graph and Twitter Card data - when available
- Robots.txt - to respect your crawling preferences
We do not access private content, user data, or any information behind authentication.
For Website Owners & Security Teams
If you need to whitelist our bot or have any concerns:
- User Agent: Look for "BufferLinkPreviewBot" in your logs
- IP Addresses: Whitelist the IP addresses listed above if needed
- Contact: Reach out to us at support@buffer.com
- Control: Use robots.txt to specify which pages we can access
We're committed to being transparent and respectful. If you have any questions or need assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us.
Programmatic Access
For automated systems and integrations, you can access structured and up-to-date information about our bot by requesting:
/about/bots/link-preview-bot.json
This JSON endpoint provides the same information as this page in a machine-readable format.