YandexFavicons user agent
Operated by Yandex
YandexFavicons is the Yandex robot that downloads a site's favicon to show in search results.
The YandexFavicons bot at a glance
- YandexFavicons is operated by Yandex and crawls web pages for a search engine index.
- The robots.txt token for YandexFavicons is YandexFavicons.
- Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results.
- YandexFavicons robots.txt support: Not for user-requested fetches.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is YandexFavicons?
Blocking it can leave a blank icon next to your results.
Yandex lists this robot on its official page of Yandex robots.
Should you block YandexFavicons?
Allow YandexFavicons 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 for user-requested fetches |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow YandexFavicons
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 YandexFavicons is matched case-insensitively. robots.txt alone may not stop YandexFavicons, so add the Nginx, Apache or Cloudflare rule as well.
robots.txt: block
# Block YandexFavicons
User-agent: YandexFavicons
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow YandexFavicons
User-agent: YandexFavicons
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep YandexFavicons out of private areas only
User-agent: YandexFavicons
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to YandexFavicons
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(YandexFavicons)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to YandexFavicons
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (YandexFavicons) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "YandexFavicons")How to verify real YandexFavicons 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 YandexFavicons in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts YandexFavicons requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "YandexFavicons" 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.
YandexFavicons user agent string
The full user agent Yandex publishes for YandexFavicons. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexFavicons/1.0; +http://yandex.com/bots)YandexFavicons FAQ
YandexFavicons identifies itself with the robots.txt token "YandexFavicons". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexFavicons/1.0; +http://yandex.com/bots)
Partly. YandexFavicons fetches pages because a user asked for them, and Yandex says robots.txt rules may not apply to those user-requested fetches. Use a firewall rule if you must stop it.
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: YandexFavicons" 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 YandexFavicons 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 "YandexFavicons", for example with: grep -i "YandexFavicons" 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.
