YandexForDomain bot

What is YandexForDomain?

YandexForDomain is a specialized web crawler operated by Yandex, Russia's largest search engine and technology company. It's a task-specific bot that focuses on domain verification for Yandex's email services, particularly Yandex.Mail for Domains, which allows users to create custom email addresses with their own domains. This crawler identifies itself in server logs with the user agent string Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexForDomain/1.0; +http://yandex.com/bots), following standard user agent syntax conventions. Unlike YandexBot (which indexes general web content), YandexForDomain has a narrower purpose tied specifically to domain validation processes. It operates with minimal impact on server resources due to its focused crawling patterns, typically making brief, targeted visits rather than comprehensive site scans.

Why is YandexForDomain crawling my site?

If you're seeing YandexForDomain in your logs, it's most likely because someone is attempting to verify ownership of your domain for use with Yandex's email services. This crawler visits sites specifically during the domain verification process required to set up Yandex.Mail. Its crawling is triggered when a user registers your domain with Yandex's email services and needs to prove ownership. YandexForDomain looks for specific verification markers such as specially formatted TXT records in your DNS settings or verification HTML files placed on your web server. These visits are typically infrequent and transient, occurring primarily during initial domain setup or periodic re-verification phases. The crawling is considered authorized when initiated by the legitimate domain owner.

What is the purpose of YandexForDomain?

YandexForDomain serves as the verification mechanism for Yandex's email infrastructure services. Its primary purpose is to confirm domain ownership before allowing users to set up custom email addresses through Yandex.Mail for Domains. When someone wants to use your domain with Yandex's email services, this bot helps ensure they actually control the domain by checking for verification tokens. This verification process protects both domain owners and email users by preventing unauthorized use of domains for email services. For website owners, YandexForDomain's activities generally have no impact on your site's performance or search ranking – it's purely a verification tool rather than a content indexer or data collector. The bot's focused approach means it consumes minimal server resources during its verification checks.

How do I block YandexForDomain?

YandexForDomain respects standard robots.txt directives, making it straightforward to control its access to your site. If you want to block this crawler completely, you can add the following lines to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: YandexForDomain
Disallow: /

This tells the bot it's not permitted to access any part of your site. If you only want to restrict access to certain directories, you can specify particular paths instead:

User-agent: YandexForDomain
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /restricted/

Keep in mind that blocking YandexForDomain will prevent anyone from using your domain with Yandex's email services, as the verification process will fail. This could be intentional if you want to prevent unauthorized attempts to use your domain with Yandex services. However, if you or your organization legitimately uses Yandex.Mail for Domains, blocking this bot will disrupt your email service verification. If you're concerned about suspicious verification attempts, it's worth investigating whether someone in your organization is setting up email services or if there might be unauthorized verification attempts. For most sites, there's little reason to block YandexForDomain unless you specifically want to prevent use of your domain with Yandex's email services.