🤖 Overview

docomo is a web crawler operated by NTT Docomo, Japan’s largest mobile telecommunications company, to index publicly accessible content for its mobile search services such as i‑mode and dmenu. The bot has been active since the early 2000s and is officially documented on NTT Docomo’s developer portal at https://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/.

🌐 Technical Behavior

The docomo crawler primarily sends HTTP/1.1 requests with User-Agent strings like “DoCoMo/2.0 N905i(c100;TB;W24H12)” or “docomo/2.0”. It originates from IP ranges allocated to NTT Docomo’s domestic network (e.g., 1.xx.xx.xx, 27.xx.xx.xx) and uses a breadth‑first crawling strategy with a default crawl delay of 10 seconds between requests. The bot does not execute JavaScript and only fetches static HTML, CSS, and image resources. Its request frequency can spike during recrawling cycles, but official docs recommend a crawl delay of 10 seconds.

📋 robots.txt Compliance

NTT Docomo’s crawler policy explicitly states that the bot honors robots.txt directives, including Disallow and Crawl‑Delay entries. Independent webmaster tests confirm consistent compliance, though isolated historical reports mention occasional delays in recognising new rules. Overall, the bot is considered cooperative.

🔍 Detection Indicators

Primary User-Agent patterns include “DoCoMo/2.0” (with device model details), “docomo”, or “docomo/1.0”. The bot also leaves a reverse‑DNS footprint matching *.docomo.ne.jp or *.nttdocomo.co.jp. Behavioral fingerprints show a high proportion of requests to small CSS/JS files and consistent intervals of 10 seconds between fetches.

📊 Data Usage

Collected content feeds NTT Docomo’s mobile search index, powering results on i‑mode and dmenu platforms. It also supports content recommendations and contextual advertising. NTT Docomo’s privacy policy states only public, non‑personal information is stored.

⚙️ Rate Limiting Policy

The docomo crawler is rate‑limited because its bursty recrawling can exhaust small server resources. A threshold of 1 request per 10 seconds is recommended, matching the bot’s own advertised crawl delay, balancing indexing needs with server protection.

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