YandexFavicons bot

What is YandexFavicons?

YandexFavicons is a specialized web crawler developed and operated by Yandex, Russia's leading search engine company. This dedicated bot is specifically designed to discover, retrieve, and index favicon images from websites across the internet. Favicons are the small icons that appear in browser tabs, bookmarks, and search results that visually represent a website's brand.

As a purpose-built crawler, YandexFavicons focuses exclusively on finding and indexing these visual brand elements rather than crawling entire websites for content. When visiting your site, it identifies itself with the user agent string: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexFavicons/1.0; +http://yandex.com/bots).

The bot operates with distinctive crawling patterns compared to general-purpose crawlers. It typically makes targeted requests to common favicon locations (like /favicon.ico) and locations specified in HTML link tags. Its crawling frequency is relatively low, as it primarily revisits sites when favicon changes are detected or when updates are needed for Yandex's search interface.

Why is YandexFavicons crawling my site?

YandexFavicons visits your site to locate and index your favicon for display in Yandex's search results, browser address bars, bookmarks, and other Yandex services. This helps create a more visually rich and brand-recognizable experience for users.

The bot typically looks for favicon files in standard locations, including:

• The root directory (/favicon.ico)
• HTML link elements in your page header that specify favicon locations
• Various sizes and formats of favicon files (16×16, 32×32, and 120×120 pixels)

Unlike content-focused crawlers that might visit daily, YandexFavicons has a lower crawling frequency. It may revisit your site when:

• Your favicon file has been modified
• Yandex detects changes to your site structure
• Your site has been newly added to Yandex's index
• A user requests an update through Yandex's tools

This crawling activity is authorized and legitimate, representing standard behavior for search engines that display favicons in their results.

What is the purpose of YandexFavicons?

YandexFavicons supports Yandex's search ecosystem by enabling visual brand elements to appear throughout their services. The primary purpose is to enhance the user experience by providing visual cues that help users quickly identify familiar websites in search results, browser interfaces, and other Yandex products.

The collected favicon data serves several specific functions:

1. Displaying your site's icon next to your listing in Yandex search results
2. Showing your brand icon in the Yandex Browser address bar
3. Including your visual identity in bookmarks and history interfaces
4. Enhancing the appearance of your site in Yandex advertising platforms

For website owners, this provides value by increasing brand recognition and potentially improving click-through rates. Research suggests that search results and advertisements displaying favicons typically see higher engagement rates compared to text-only listings.

How do I block YandexFavicons?

YandexFavicons respects standard robots.txt directives, making it straightforward to control its access to your site. If you wish to block this crawler from accessing your favicon, you can add the following to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: YandexFavicons
Disallow: /

This will prevent YandexFavicons from crawling any part of your site. If you only want to block access to specific favicon files while allowing the bot to access others, you can use more targeted directives:

User-agent: YandexFavicons
Disallow: /favicon.ico
Disallow: /assets/icons/

However, blocking YandexFavicons means your site won't display a favicon in Yandex search results and related services. This could potentially reduce your brand visibility and recognition for users of Yandex services. Instead of completely blocking the bot, you might consider allowing access to just your favicon files while restricting access to other parts of your site if needed.

If you're experiencing excessive crawling or other issues with YandexFavicons, you can also manage its behavior through Yandex Webmaster Tools, which provides additional controls for how Yandex crawlers interact with your site.