About improvecortland-bot
Last updated 2026-08-31.
What it is
ImproveCortland keeps a searchable copy of the City of Cortland's official website so residents can ask plain-language questions and get an answer with a link back to the City's own page. The crawler that maintains that copy identifies itself as:
improvecortland-bot/1.0 (+https://improvecortland.com/about-the-bot; barkleesanders@esbe.tech)
What it does
- Reads https://www.cortlandny.gov/sitemap.xml — the City's own published list of its pages. It never guesses URLs and never follows links off that origin.
- Fetches at most 20 pages per run, every 6 hours (about 80 pages a day), waiting 1.5 seconds between requests.
- Refetches a page only when the sitemap's own
lastmodsays it changed. - Requests pages only. It does not submit forms, sign in, or write anything.
Blocking it
Add improvecortland-bot to the City's robots.txt, or email us and we will stop. No explanation needed.
Not affiliated with the City
ImproveCortland is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the City of Cortland. It is an independent tool built by a resident using New York's Freedom of Information Law (Public Officers Law, Article 6).