YandexMedia
User agent, robots.txt rules and blocking guide by Yandex
YandexMedia is the Yandex robot that indexes multimedia data.
Should you block YandexMedia?
AllowAllow YandexMedia unless it causes a measurable load problem.
- Search rankings
- Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results.
- 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.
YandexMedia at a glance
- robots.txt token
YandexMedia- Operator
- Yandex
- What it does
- Crawls web pages for a search engine index.
- Follows robots.txt
- Yes
- Can be verified
- Yes, reverse DNS
- Source
- Official documentation
What is YandexMedia?
It fetches audio and media content for Yandex services.
Yandex lists this robot on its official page of Yandex robots.
How to block or allow YandexMedia
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 YandexMedia is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block YandexMedia
User-agent: YandexMedia
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow YandexMedia
User-agent: YandexMedia
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep YandexMedia out of private areas only
User-agent: YandexMedia
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to YandexMedia
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(YandexMedia)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to YandexMedia
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (YandexMedia) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "YandexMedia")How to verify real YandexMedia 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 YandexMedia in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. This command counts YandexMedia requests per URL on Nginx or Apache:
grep -i "YandexMedia" 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.
YandexMedia user agent string
The full user agent published for YandexMedia. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexMedia/3.0; +http://yandex.com/bots)YandexMedia FAQ
YandexMedia identifies itself with the robots.txt token "YandexMedia". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexMedia/3.0; +http://yandex.com/bots)
Yandex states that YandexMedia follows robots.txt rules. Check the documented scope and any exceptions on this profile.
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: YandexMedia" 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 YandexMedia 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 "YandexMedia", for example with: grep -i "YandexMedia" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Last reviewed by Justin Hà. Source: Yandex crawler documentation.
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.
