diff --git a/AUTHORS b/AUTHORS
index b8047d92c9..b5f73f73c6 100644
--- a/AUTHORS
+++ b/AUTHORS
@@ -472,6 +472,7 @@ answer newbie questions, and generally made Django that much better:
     Jyrki Pulliainen <jyrki.pulliainen@gmail.com>
     Thejaswi Puthraya <thejaswi.puthraya@gmail.com>
     Johann Queuniet <johann.queuniet@adh.naellia.eu>
+    Ram Rachum <ram@rachum.com>
     Jan Rademaker
     Michael Radziej <mir@noris.de>
     Laurent Rahuel <laurent.rahuel@gmail.com>
diff --git a/django/middleware/common.py b/django/middleware/common.py
index 250737970d..1131bd698d 100644
--- a/django/middleware/common.py
+++ b/django/middleware/common.py
@@ -142,15 +142,17 @@ class BrokenLinkEmailsMiddleware(object):
             domain = request.get_host()
             path = request.get_full_path()
             referer = force_text(request.META.get('HTTP_REFERER', ''), errors='replace')
-            is_internal = self.is_internal_request(domain, referer)
-            is_not_search_engine = '?' not in referer
-            is_ignorable = self.is_ignorable_404(path)
-            if referer and (is_internal or is_not_search_engine) and not is_ignorable:
+
+            if not self.is_ignorable_request(request, path, domain, referer):
                 ua = request.META.get('HTTP_USER_AGENT', '<none>')
                 ip = request.META.get('REMOTE_ADDR', '<none>')
                 mail_managers(
-                    "Broken %slink on %s" % (('INTERNAL ' if is_internal else ''), domain),
-                    "Referrer: %s\nRequested URL: %s\nUser agent: %s\nIP address: %s\n" % (referer, path, ua, ip),
+                    "Broken %slink on %s" % (
+                        ('INTERNAL ' if self.is_internal_request(domain, referer) else ''),
+                        domain
+                    ),
+                    "Referrer: %s\nRequested URL: %s\nUser agent: %s\n"
+                    "IP address: %s\n" % (referer, path, ua, ip),
                     fail_silently=True)
         return response
 
@@ -159,10 +161,14 @@ class BrokenLinkEmailsMiddleware(object):
         Returns True if the referring URL is the same domain as the current request.
         """
         # Different subdomains are treated as different domains.
-        return re.match("^https?://%s/" % re.escape(domain), referer)
+        return bool(re.match("^https?://%s/" % re.escape(domain), referer))
 
-    def is_ignorable_404(self, uri):
+    def is_ignorable_request(self, request, uri, domain, referer):
         """
-        Returns True if a 404 at the given URL *shouldn't* notify the site managers.
+        Returns True if the given request *shouldn't* notify the site managers.
         """
+        # '?' in referer is identified as search engine source
+        if (not referer or
+                (not self.is_internal_request(domain, referer) and '?' in referer)):
+            return True
         return any(pattern.search(uri) for pattern in settings.IGNORABLE_404_URLS)
diff --git a/docs/howto/error-reporting.txt b/docs/howto/error-reporting.txt
index 27f11f4936..987a503e95 100644
--- a/docs/howto/error-reporting.txt
+++ b/docs/howto/error-reporting.txt
@@ -98,6 +98,11 @@ crawlers often request::
 (Note that these are regular expressions, so we put a backslash in front of
 periods to escape them.)
 
+If you'd like to customize the behavior of
+:class:`django.middleware.common.BrokenLinkEmailsMiddleware` further (for
+example to ignore requests coming from web crawlers), you should subclass it
+and override its methods.
+
 .. seealso::
 
    404 errors are logged using the logging framework. By default, these log
diff --git a/tests/middleware/tests.py b/tests/middleware/tests.py
index 1ff8390f31..265eb97c36 100644
--- a/tests/middleware/tests.py
+++ b/tests/middleware/tests.py
@@ -326,6 +326,25 @@ class BrokenLinkEmailsMiddlewareTest(TestCase):
         BrokenLinkEmailsMiddleware().process_response(self.req, self.resp)
         self.assertEqual(len(mail.outbox), 1)
 
+    def test_custom_request_checker(self):
+        class SubclassedMiddleware(BrokenLinkEmailsMiddleware):
+            ignored_user_agent_patterns = (re.compile(r'Spider.*'),
+                                           re.compile(r'Robot.*'))
+            def is_ignorable_request(self, request, uri, domain, referer):
+                '''Check user-agent in addition to normal checks.'''
+                if super(SubclassedMiddleware, self).is_ignorable_request(request, uri, domain, referer):
+                    return True
+                user_agent = request.META['HTTP_USER_AGENT']
+                return any(pattern.search(user_agent) for pattern in
+                               self.ignored_user_agent_patterns)
+
+        self.req.META['HTTP_REFERER'] = '/another/url/'
+        self.req.META['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] = 'Spider machine 3.4'
+        SubclassedMiddleware().process_response(self.req, self.resp)
+        self.assertEqual(len(mail.outbox), 0)
+        self.req.META['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] = 'My user agent'
+        SubclassedMiddleware().process_response(self.req, self.resp)
+        self.assertEqual(len(mail.outbox), 1)
 
 class ConditionalGetMiddlewareTest(TestCase):
     urls = 'middleware.cond_get_urls'