About LocalChurchBot
Saw us in your server logs? Here's exactly what our crawler does — and how to opt out.
What it is
LocalChurchBot is the crawler behind Local Church, a free community guide to Christian events. It identifies itself with the user-agent:
LocalChurchBot/1.0 (+https://thelocalchurch.ca/about-bot)
What it does
It visits the public events page of church websites — typically up to twice a day, a handful of pages per visit — and reads publicly posted event details (title, date, time, location, description). If nothing on the page has changed since the last visit, it moves on without further processing. It never logs in and never touches private areas — it only reads event details your church has already published publicly, and it isn't looking for information about individual people.
Why it exists
To help people find your events. Listings on Local Church are free for churches, link back to your website, and go out in a free community digest twice a week. Most churches see it as free promotion — but it's your call, and opting out is easy.
Corrections, changes & opting out
Email [email protected] and we can: point the bot at a better events page on your site, fix any details on your listing, or stop crawling your site and remove your listing entirely. Opt-outs are honored permanently — once you're out, the bot doesn't come back. You can also claim your church's listing to manage it yourself.