YouBot user agent
Operated by You.com
YouBot is You.com's crawler, reported as collecting data for You.com search and AI answers.
The YouBot bot at a glance
- YouBot is operated by You.com and indexes web pages so an AI search product can show and cite them in answers.
- The robots.txt token for YouBot is YouBot.
- Blocking an AI search crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- YouBot robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is YouBot?
YouBot builds the index behind You.com’s AI search engine.
You.com’s former YouBot page is no longer online.
Should you block YouBot?
Allow YouBot unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking an AI search crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking removes your pages from that AI search index, so its answers can no longer cite or link to your website. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow YouBot
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 YouBot is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block YouBot
User-agent: YouBot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow YouBot
User-agent: YouBot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep YouBot out of private areas only
User-agent: YouBot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to YouBot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(YouBot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to YouBot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (YouBot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "YouBot")How to verify real YouBot traffic
You.com publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for YouBot, so the user agent cannot be verified. Anyone can send the same string. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
How to find YouBot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts YouBot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "YouBot" 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.
YouBot FAQ
YouBot uses the robots.txt token "YouBot". You.com does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. You.com states that YouBot follows robots.txt rules written for the "YouBot" token.
Blocking an AI search crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. Blocking removes your pages from that AI search index, so its answers can no longer cite or link to your website.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: YouBot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. You.com publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for YouBot, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "YouBot", for example with: grep -i "YouBot" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Public bot registry. 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.
