LandOwl-DevWatch
The automated reader behind Land Owl's Dev Watch feature.
What it is
LandOwl-DevWatch collects publicly posted local-government planning and zoning information: meeting agendas, hearing notices, case lists and plat registers. Land Owl turns that information into searchable records and alerts so landowners and land professionals can see proposed rezonings and developments near them.
What it reads
Only pages and files that your jurisdiction publishes for the public. It never logs in, submits forms, solves a CAPTCHA, bypasses a challenge, or downloads anything private.
How it identifies itself
Every request carries this User-Agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; LandOwl-DevWatch/1.0; +https://www.landowl.com/bot; data@landowl.com)The product token is LandOwl-DevWatch. Use it in robots.txt, or in a firewall or bot-management rule, to allow or block us.
Where signing is enabled, requests are also signed with HTTP Message Signatures (the Web Bot Auth standard), so you can verify that a request really came from us even though our network addresses are shared. Our public key directory is at https://www.landowl.com/.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory.
How often
- Each source is read on a schedule, no more often than about every few hours.
- At most 6 different sites are read at the same time.
- Requests to the same site are at least 1.5 seconds apart, and in practice usually far less frequent.
- Failed requests are retried a few times with increasing delays, then given up until the next cycle.
Rules it follows
LandOwl-DevWatch reads your robots.txt and honors Disallow and Crawl-delay for the LandOwl-DevWatch token (and for * when you have no rule for us). It does not rotate or disguise its User-Agent.
Opt out, or ask us to use a different feed
Either of these works, and we honor it within one collection cycle:
- Add this to your
robots.txt:User-agent: LandOwl-DevWatch Disallow: / - Email data@landowl.com.
If you would rather we use an RSS feed, API or open-data portal, tell us and we will switch. If your site uses a bot filter and you would like us to get through, you can allow the LandOwl-DevWatch User-Agent token or our signature.
Contact
Land Owl LLC, data@landowl.com.