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Yandex

YandexBot

IndexingVerified by rDNSVerified July 2026

What it is

Yandex's primary search crawler. Classified as indexing — it builds a searchable retrieval index.

In Aiola's taxonomy, Indexing means crawled for ai or search indexing.

User agent

Look for the match token inside the complete HTTP User-Agent header. Tokens can be spoofed, so use the network checks below for authentication.

Full example User-Agent
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexBot/3.0; +http://yandex.com/bots)
Case-insensitive match token
YandexBot

Official IP ranges

Yandex supports reverse-DNS verification for this crawler family. Accepted suffixes in this snapshot: .yandex.ru, .yandex.net, .yandex.com.

Use a double lookup: reverse-resolve the request IP, validate the exact hostname suffix, then forward-resolve that hostname and require it to return the original IP. Checking only the visible hostname is vulnerable to attacker-controlled PTR records.

Verify authenticity

Start with the source IP recorded by your trusted edge or server, not an untrusted forwarded header.

Reverse- and forward-DNS double lookup
host REQUEST_IP
# Confirm the hostname ends in an official suffix
host RETURNED_HOSTNAME
# The forward lookup must return REQUEST_IP

For production checks, test against every current prefix in the vendor feed. Re-fetch feeds regularly: a July 2026 snapshot is evidence of publication, not a permanent firewall list.

Control it with robots.txt

Yandex documents crawler controls for this bot family. Robots.txt can direct cooperative crawling, but it cannot prove that a request is authentic.

Allow YandexBot
User-agent: YandexBot
Allow: /
Block YandexBot
User-agent: YandexBot
Disallow: /

Read Yandex's official crawler documentation ↗

Track it

Aiola tracks this crawler on your site — crawls, pages, trends. See when YandexBot arrives, which URLs it requests, and how activity changes over time.

Explore Aiola Analytics

FAQ

What is YandexBot?

Yandex's primary search crawler. Classified as indexing — it builds a searchable retrieval index.

What user-agent token identifies YandexBot?

Match the case-insensitive token “YandexBot” in the User-Agent header. A matching header alone does not authenticate the sender.

Can I verify YandexBot by IP address?

Yandex documents reverse-DNS verification. Confirm the hostname ends in an allowed suffix, then resolve that hostname forward and require it to return the original IP.

Can robots.txt block YandexBot?

Yandex documents crawler controls for this bot family. Robots.txt can direct cooperative crawling, but it cannot prove that a request is authentic. Use the specific “YandexBot” group when you want a rule for this identity without changing rules for every crawler.

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