Yeti user agent
Operated by Naver
Yeti is Naver's crawler that indexes pages for Naver Search, the leading search engine in South Korea.
The Yeti bot at a glance
- Yeti is operated by Naver and crawls web pages for a search engine index.
- The robots.txt token for Yeti is Yeti.
- Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results.
- Yeti robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is Yeti?
Yeti collects pages for Naver Search. Sites targeting Korean users need it to be visible on Naver.
Naver documents how to control Yeti with robots.txt.
Should you block Yeti?
Allow Yeti 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 Yeti
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 Yeti is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Yeti
User-agent: Yeti
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Yeti
User-agent: Yeti
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Yeti out of private areas only
User-agent: Yeti
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Yeti
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Yeti)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Yeti
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Yeti) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Yeti")How to verify real Yeti traffic
Naver publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Yeti, 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 Yeti in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Yeti requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Yeti" 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.
Yeti FAQ
Yeti uses the robots.txt token "Yeti". Naver does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. Naver states that Yeti follows robots.txt rules written for the "Yeti" 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: Yeti" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Naver publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Yeti, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "Yeti", for example with: grep -i "Yeti" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Naver 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.
