Yahoo! Slurp user agent
Operated by Yahoo
Yahoo! Slurp is Yahoo's web crawler user agent.
The Yahoo! Slurp bot at a glance
- Yahoo! Slurp is operated by Yahoo and crawls web pages for a search engine index.
- The robots.txt token for Yahoo! Slurp is Slurp.
- Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results.
- Yahoo! Slurp robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is Yahoo! Slurp?
Yahoo Search results are powered by Bing, so Slurp now matters far less than Bingbot for ranking.
Yahoo documents Slurp and how to control it on its help site.
Should you block Yahoo! Slurp?
Allow Yahoo! Slurp 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 Yahoo! Slurp
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 Slurp is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Yahoo! Slurp
User-agent: Slurp
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Yahoo! Slurp
User-agent: Slurp
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Yahoo! Slurp out of private areas only
User-agent: Slurp
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Yahoo! Slurp
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Slurp)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Yahoo! Slurp
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Slurp) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Slurp")How to verify real Yahoo! Slurp traffic
Yahoo publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Yahoo! Slurp, 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 Yahoo! Slurp in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Yahoo! Slurp requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Slurp" 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.
Yahoo! Slurp user agent string
The full user agent Yahoo publishes for Yahoo! Slurp. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp/3.0; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)Yahoo! Slurp FAQ
Yahoo! Slurp identifies itself with the robots.txt token "Slurp". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp/3.0; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)
Yes. Yahoo states that Yahoo! Slurp follows robots.txt rules written for the "Slurp" 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: Slurp" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Yahoo publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Yahoo! Slurp, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "Slurp", for example with: grep -i "Slurp" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Yahoo 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.
