YandexBot: Yandex's Search Crawler
What is YandexBot?
YandexBot is the Yandex search crawler. YandexBot serves Yandex search results only, so blocking it matters for Russian-language and regional traffic rather than for AI answers.
Key facts
- YandexBot is operated by Yandex, and its purpose is classic search: conventional search indexing.
- Yandex publishes no full user-agent string for YandexBot, so Kymo matches the token YandexBot observed in real logs.
- The robots.txt token for YandexBot is YandexBot, and Yandex documents that YandexBot respects that rule.
- YandexBot can send a visitor to your site, and YandexBot attaches a linked citation when it uses your content.
Specification
| Operator | Yandex |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Classic searchConventional search indexing. On some engines the same index also feeds AI-generated answer surfaces. |
| Agent kind | CrawlerAutonomous crawler. Appears in your logs under its own user-agent. |
| User agent | Not documented by Yandex. Kymo matches this agent on the token YandexBot, observed in real logs rather than published in operator documentation. |
| robots.txt token | YandexBot |
| robots.txt compliance | Documented: respects robots.txt |
| Verification | No published method, user agent is the only signal |
| Sends referral traffic | Yes |
| Attaches a citation | Yes |
| Status | Active |
| Legacy Kymo category | indexing |
| Source | Observed in real logs, no operator documentation locatedYandex publishes no crawler documentation that Kymo could locate. Everything on this page comes from observed traffic, not from a vendor page. |
| Verified on |
What this looks like in your logs
grep -i 'YandexBot' access.log
Yandex publishes no full user-agent string for YandexBot, so the rest of the line varies and only the token YandexBot is dependable. Kymo matches on that token, case-insensitively, for the same reason.
What YandexBot does not do
YandexBot does not guarantee a visit, because a read only becomes a visit if a person clicks the citation that came out of it.
YandexBot does not train a model on what it reads, and it has no part in what any other search engine shows.
Yandex publishes no documentation for YandexBot at all, so no crawl frequency and no compliance statement exists to quote.
How Kymo classifies it
Kymo files YandexBot under Yandex as indexing, classified from the HTTP request on the server rather than from anything running in a browser.
A hit from YandexBot appears on the Crawlers dashboard and is deliberately left out of the AI Visibility numbers. An index sweep produces no click to miss, so counting it there would inflate the read number and break its relationship to the visitor number beside it.
Seen on our own sites
| Last seen | 15 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|
| Days active, last 30 days | 31 |
| Requests, last 30 days | 30,365 |
Counted by Kymo on kymo.in and remotestack.in, the two sites we run, up to 15 Sep 2026. Two sites is a small sample. Treat these numbers as proof the bot is active now.
Allow it or block it
Blocking YandexBot removes you from Yandex search results. Relevant mainly for sites with Russian-language or regional traffic.
| Allow it if | Block it if |
|---|---|
| You want to appear in Yandex search results. | Yandex sends you no traffic worth the crawl, which is usually a question of language and region. |
robots.txt directives
Both blocks below address YandexBot only. Rules for one token never apply to another, even from the same operator.
Allow YandexBot
User-agent: YandexBot Allow: /
Block YandexBot
User-agent: YandexBot Disallow: /
Questions
How do I know a request claiming to be YandexBot is genuine?
Yandex publishes no verification method for YandexBot, so the user-agent string is the only signal available, and anyone can send one. Treat a claimed YandexBot request as unproven.
Does blocking YandexBot affect my Google ranking?
No. A Google ranking is decided by Googlebot, which is a separate crawler. Each search engine runs its own crawler and its own index, so blocking YandexBot removes you from Yandex results and leaves Google untouched.
Will I see YandexBot in Google Analytics?
No. Google Analytics runs a JavaScript tag in a visitor's browser, and YandexBot reads your HTML and leaves without running any script. Server-side logging is the only way to record it.
Does YandexBot send traffic back to my site?
Yes. YandexBot builds an index that Yandex cites its sources from, and a citation there is a link a person can click. A crawl is still not a visit, so expect the read count to run far ahead of the click count.
Related crawlers
All AI crawlers and control tokens
See this bot in your own logs
YandexBot decides whether you appear in Yandex results, and a browser tag cannot tell you whether it ever came.
Kymo reads the HTTP request on your server, so a crawler that never runs JavaScript is still recorded. You see which bots reached the site, which pages they took and how often, next to your human traffic.
Start free → 14-day free trial. No card required.
No account yet? Run a free AI visibility check on your own site.