Does Matomo track search engine bots or other spider / robots?

By default, Matomo only tracks visitors with Javascript enabled. Most bots will not execute JavaScript, although more advanced bots can now execute JavaScript.

In general there are a few options to track bots and search engine bots using Matomo depending on how you track users in Matomo:

• If you want to track bots without Javascript, you can add an Image Tracker on your pages: Learn more in How do I enable tracking for visitors when JavaScript cannot be used on a page (such as bots)?. To activate the tracking for bots, add &bots=1 to the image URL.
• If you’re using the Javascript Tracker and you want to track the Javascript-enabled bots only, add the following line in your tracking code: _paq.push(['appendToTrackingUrl', 'bots=1']);.
• If you’re using the Tracking HTTP API, you can enable the tracking of bots by setting the parameter &bots=1 in the matomo.php tracking request.
• If you’re importing your web server access log files, use the option --enable-bots in the tool to enable tracking of all bots.

See also: Why do Matomo data reports differ from Google Analytics and other analytics tools?