YisouSpider user agent
Operated by Alibaba
YisouSpider is the crawler of Shenma search, Alibaba's mobile search engine in China.
The YisouSpider bot at a glance
- YisouSpider is operated by Alibaba and crawls web pages for a search engine index.
- The robots.txt token for YisouSpider is YisouSpider.
- Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results.
- YisouSpider robots.txt support: Not documented.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is YisouSpider?
YisouSpider indexes pages for Shenma, the default search in the UC Browser.
Alibaba has not published an English crawler page for it.
Should you block YisouSpider?
Allow YisouSpider 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 | Not documented |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow YisouSpider
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 YisouSpider is matched case-insensitively. robots.txt alone may not stop YisouSpider, so add the Nginx, Apache or Cloudflare rule as well.
robots.txt: block
# Block YisouSpider
User-agent: YisouSpider
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow YisouSpider
User-agent: YisouSpider
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep YisouSpider out of private areas only
User-agent: YisouSpider
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to YisouSpider
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(YisouSpider)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to YisouSpider
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (YisouSpider) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "YisouSpider")How to verify real YisouSpider traffic
Alibaba publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for YisouSpider, 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 YisouSpider in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts YisouSpider requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "YisouSpider" 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.
YisouSpider user agent string
The full user agent Alibaba publishes for YisouSpider. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
YisouSpiderYisouSpider FAQ
YisouSpider identifies itself with the robots.txt token "YisouSpider". A typical request header reads: YisouSpider
Alibaba has not documented how YisouSpider treats robots.txt. Add a robots.txt rule and back it with a server rule if the traffic matters to you.
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: YisouSpider" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Alibaba publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for YisouSpider, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "YisouSpider", for example with: grep -i "YisouSpider" 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.
