YandexBot user agent
Operated by Yandex
YandexBot is Yandex's main indexing crawler for Yandex Search.
The YandexBot bot at a glance
- YandexBot is operated by Yandex and crawls web pages for a search engine index.
- The robots.txt token for YandexBot is YandexBot.
- Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results.
- YandexBot robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is YandexBot?
YandexBot crawls pages for Yandex Search, the leading search engine in Russia.
Yandex runs many specialised robots; YandexBot is the one that decides inclusion in the main index.
Should you block YandexBot?
Allow YandexBot unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | AI features built on that search index, such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode on top of Googlebot, also lose access to your pages. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow YandexBot
Put the robots.txt rule in the file at the root of every domain and subdomain, for example https://example.com/robots.txt. The token YandexBot is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block YandexBot
User-agent: YandexBot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow YandexBot
User-agent: YandexBot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep YandexBot out of private areas only
User-agent: YandexBot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to YandexBot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(YandexBot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to YandexBot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (YandexBot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "YandexBot")How to verify real YandexBot traffic
Reverse DNS check: look up the request IP, confirm the hostname ends in yandex.ru, yandex.net, yandex.com, then look up that hostname and confirm it returns the same IP.
# 1. Reverse lookup: the hostname must end in yandex.ru, yandex.net, yandex.com
host REQUEST_IP
# 2. Forward lookup: must return the same REQUEST_IP
host HOSTNAME_FROM_STEP_1How to find YandexBot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts YandexBot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "YandexBot" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.
YandexBot user agent string
The full user agent Yandex publishes for YandexBot. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexBot/3.0; +http://yandex.com/bots)YandexBot FAQ
YandexBot identifies itself with the robots.txt token "YandexBot". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexBot/3.0; +http://yandex.com/bots)
Yes. Yandex states that YandexBot follows robots.txt rules written for the "YandexBot" token.
Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results. AI features built on that search index, such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode on top of Googlebot, also lose access to your pages.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: YandexBot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Yes. Run a reverse DNS lookup on the request IP; a real YandexBot request resolves to yandex.ru, yandex.net, yandex.com, and a forward lookup of that hostname returns the same IP.
Search your server access log for "YandexBot", for example with: grep -i "YandexBot" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Yandex crawler documentation. Last reviewed by Justin Hà.
See which of these bots actually reach your website
The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers in your server log, for free. The GEO Technical Package sets up robots.txt, llms.txt and crawler access for AI search.
