PrestaShop Module

BadBot Protection for PrestaShop

Stop scanners, price scrapers, spam bots and fake Googlebots with a browser check that runs on your own server. Real customers and good bots pass as usual. No account needed, and no visitor data leaves your shop.

Last Update: 20 Oct 2026

Version: 5.0

Compatibility: PrestaShop 1.7.8, 8 and 9 / PHP 7.2 and newer

Price: Free

Download BadBot Protection for PrestaShop

In your back office: Modules > Module Manager > Upload a module.

Why bots matter

Most of the traffic of a typical online shop is not people. Vulnerability scanners look for holes in your modules, scrapers copy your prices and product descriptions, spam bots fill your contact, review and newsletter forms, and password guessers try your customer and back office logins. They slow the shop down for real customers and put it at risk. BadBot Protection tells them apart from people and from the good bots you want, and stops them before they cost you server time.

What it does

Browser check on your own server. Visitors that do not look like a normal browser get a short check page. The browser solves a small calculation in about a second and gets a pass; bots stay outside. Smart mode checks only suspicious visitors, All visitors mode checks everyone once a day during an attack, and Log only mode shows what would be blocked.
Verified search engines. Google, Bing, Apple, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Baidu and others are checked against their official address lists or by reverse DNS. Real crawlers pass; scrapers that only pretend to be Googlebot are blocked.
Bot categories. Allow, check or block search engines, link previews, uptime monitors, AI assistants, AI training crawlers, SEO tools, vulnerability scanners, HTTP libraries and unknown bots.
Block AI training crawlers with one click. GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Common Crawl, Bytespider and other training crawlers get blocked, while AI search assistants that send visitors stay allowed.
Traps for scanners. Requests for files no visitor ever opens (database tools such as phpMyAdmin and Adminer, known web shells, secret files such as .env) and a hidden trap link ban the client for the time you choose.
Form protection. Customer login, registration, forgotten password, the contact form, product reviews, newsletter subscription and the back office login and password reset accept posts only from a real browser. People notice nothing; spam bots and password guessers are refused. Checkout is never touched.
Allow and block lists. IP addresses (IPv4, IPv6, CIDR), User-Agents, and URLs that never get the check.
Activity and statistics. Charts for 24 hours, 7 and 30 days, the top bots, addresses, pages and reasons, and a log of recent events.
Your check page. Your logo and texts, with a live preview.
Safe for your shop. Logged-in customers and employees are never checked. No file of the shop is changed; an optional early protection starts the check before PrestaShop loads, before any page cache module. The webservice API and payment notifications are not checked. An emergency switch file turns everything off.

Screenshots

Overview: protection status, the last 24 hours and the last 7 days

The browser check your visitors see for about a second

Bot rules: allow, check or block each category; search engines are verified

Browser check: mode, pass lifetime and your own check page with a preview

Traps for scanners, bans and protected PrestaShop forms

Activity: charts, top bots, addresses and pages

Private by design

Bot detection, the browser check and the statistics all run on your server. The module does not send visitor data anywhere and needs no account or connection to an outside service.

Full website protection

BadBot Protection stops bad bots. SiteGuarding protects the whole website. Block unwanted bots is part of the SiteGuarding Premium and Business plans, together with:

Website Firewall (WAF): SQL injection, XSS and exploit blocking
Server-side antivirus and daily malware scanning
Hack repair by our experts
DDoS prevention
Brute force and card testing protection
GEO blocking
24/7 monitoring, website backups and an SSL certificate

See Premium and Business plans

FAQ

Will it hurt my search ranking?

No. Google, Bing and other search engines are verified by their official addresses and never see the check. If a crawler cannot be verified, it gets a temporary "try later" answer, never a block.

What do real customers see?

In Smart mode almost all of them see nothing. In All visitors mode each new visitor sees the check page for about a second, once per day by default.

Will it affect checkout and payments?

No. Checkout is not a protected form, and payment notifications and the webservice API are never checked. A payment module that receives its notifications at an unusual address can be added to the excluded URLs.

How do I install it?

In your back office open Modules > Module Manager, click Upload a module and choose the archive. The protection starts in Smart mode at once; the settings are in CONFIGURE > BadBot Protection. An update is the same: upload the new archive, your settings stay.

Which PrestaShop versions are supported?

PrestaShop 1.7.8, 8 and 9, with PHP 7.2 or newer (PrestaShop 9 needs PHP 8.1 or newer).

Does it work with Cloudflare and page cache modules?

Yes. Cloudflare is detected automatically, and other proxies can be added in the settings. For a page cache module, turn on early protection in Settings: the check then runs before PrestaShop and before the cache. A Varnish server or a CDN that answers from its own cache does not ask the shop, so those requests are not checked.

Does it send data anywhere?

No. Everything runs on your server. Only the BadBot Protection page in your back office asks siteguarding.com for the number of the latest version.

I locked myself out. What now?

Create an empty file named sgbb-off.txt in the shop folder (next to index.php), with SSH, FTP or the file manager of your hosting. The protection stops at once. Delete the file to turn it back on.

Changelog

5.0
- First PrestaShop edition, on the same core as the WordPress, Joomla, OpenCart, Drupal and Magento editions.
- Browser check on your own server, with Smart, All visitors and Log only modes.
- Verified search engines by official addresses and reverse DNS; fake crawlers are blocked.
- Bot categories, including AI assistants and AI training crawlers.
- Traps for scanners, hidden trap link and bans.
- Protection for customer login, registration, forgotten password, contact, product reviews, newsletter and back office login forms.
- Works with IPv6 visitors, with logged-in customers and employees never checked; optional early protection before PrestaShop loads.
- Allow and block lists, excluded URLs, activity charts and log.
- PrestaShop 1.7.8, 8 and 9.