Should we be blocking Ahrefs and Moz type bots with htaccess?

Do you guys recommend blocking these bots and other known bots that find backlinks? I feel like this is a good idea so that competitors cannot track your backlinks and get competing links.

The only downside i see to this is not being able to check your backlinks yourself but you could always allow bots for a few hours if you need to do some research of your own.

What do you think, any negatives?

It's quite a necessity to hide your PBN from your competitors this way. And no, do not allow any bots. Few hours is enough for your PBN links to be shown in Majestic historic index forever.

Nargil said:

It's quite a necessity to hide your PBN from your competitors this way. And no, do not allow any bots. Few hours is enough for your PBN links to be shown in Majestic historic index forever.

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Hehe well i was talking about white hat sites but i guess PBN goes the same.

Do not allow any bots, except the google bot no?

TuffRivers said:

Hehe well i was talking about white hat sites but i guess PBN goes the same.

Do not allow any bots, except the google bot no?

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That does not make any sense. You are blocking bots only on the sites that are linking to your money site. If you hide bots on your money site, everybody will see your backlink profile anyway. The only thing that you hide is sites you are linking to from your money site. So it's pretty pointless to do.

Nargil said:

That does not make any sense. You are blocking bots only on the sites that are linking to your money site. If you hide bots on your money site, everybody will see your backlink profile anyway. The only thing that you hide is sites you are linking to from your money site. So it's pretty pointless to do.

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Scenario
1. Competitor sees my site ranking above thiers
2. Goes to ahrefs to see where im generating backlinks
3. Ahrefs bot is blocked, he cannot see

Am i missing something here ? Im not talking about PBNs, i specifically posted this in the white hate seo section lol

TuffRivers said:

Scenario
1. Competitor sees my site ranking above thiers
2. Goes to ahrefs to see where im generating backlinks
3. Ahrefs bot is blocked, he cannot see

Am i missing something here ? Im not talking about PBNs, i specifically posted this in the white hate seo section lol

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Read it again please. You need to block sites that are pointing to your money site. You cannot hide your backlink profile by blocking bots at your money site.

Nargil said:

Read it again please. You need to block sites that are pointing to your money site. You cannot hide your backlink profile by blocking bots at your money site.

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Yup am an idiot!

They crawl sites linking to your site and can build a profile based on that!

understood

I think you shouldn't attempt to block any bots from accessing your site, as if you have blocked the wrong one, or entered the wrong bot name, then that would have serious repercussion to your site in the process.
Furthermore, it's not wrong to allow your competitors to see your backlink profile - these are normally 'grown' over time and must never be neglected, thus, with an ever growing link profile, it would be extremely difficult for your competitor to try mimic your site's backlink profile, and not to mention, it would be costly too.
However, if you were building links using automated tools, and got ranked for that effort, then your competitor would be able to mimic that easily - the key is always to grow your backlink profile gradually over time.