YandexWebmaster bot

What is YandexWebmaster?

YandexWebmaster is a web crawler operated by Yandex, Russia's largest search engine company. It serves as the main indexing bot for Yandex's search engine services. As part of the Yandex robot family, YandexWebmaster systematically visits websites to discover, analyze, and index content for inclusion in Yandex search results. The bot identifies itself in server logs with the user-agent string YandexWebmaster, though it belongs to the broader family of Yandex crawlers that may appear under various user-agent strings containing "Yandex" (such as YandexBot).

YandexWebmaster works by following links across the web, downloading page content, and sending this information back to Yandex's servers for processing and indexing. It analyzes page structure, content, and metadata to understand what the page is about and how it should be represented in search results. Website owners can manage their site's relationship with Yandex through the Yandex.Webmaster service, which provides tools for monitoring indexing status, diagnosing issues, and optimizing site visibility in Yandex search.

Why is YandexWebmaster crawling my site?

YandexWebmaster crawls websites to discover and index content for Yandex search results. If you're seeing this bot in your logs, it means Yandex has discovered your site and is evaluating it for inclusion in its search index. The crawler is particularly interested in new content, updates to existing pages, and understanding your site's structure.

The frequency of visits depends on several factors including your site's popularity, how often content changes, and your site's importance in the Yandex ecosystem. High-traffic sites with frequently updated content may experience more regular crawling. The bot may also increase crawling activity when it discovers new sections of your site or detects significant changes to existing content.

This crawling is a standard, authorized activity for search engines, similar to how Google's or Bing's bots operate. The purpose is to maintain an up-to-date index of web content for Yandex users.

What is the purpose of YandexWebmaster?

YandexWebmaster's primary purpose is to support Yandex's search engine by discovering, analyzing, and indexing web content. The data collected helps Yandex maintain a comprehensive and current search index, allowing its users to find relevant information quickly.

For website owners, YandexWebmaster's crawling activities provide the benefit of visibility in Yandex search results, potentially driving traffic from Yandex users. The associated Yandex.Webmaster service offers tools for site owners to understand how their site appears in Yandex search, identify technical issues, and optimize their presence.

The bot also helps Yandex identify site structure, understand content relationships, and determine the relevance and quality of web pages. This information influences how and where pages appear in Yandex search results.

How do I block YandexWebmaster?

YandexWebmaster respects the robots.txt protocol, giving website administrators control over what parts of their site can be crawled. To block YandexWebmaster specifically, you can add directives to your robots.txt file using the User-agent directive.

In the robots.txt file, YandexWebmaster looks for records starting with User-agent: and searches for either "Yandex" (case-insensitive) or "*". If "User-agent: Yandex" is found, the "User-agent: *" directive is ignored. You can create specific rules for different Yandex bots:

User-agent: YandexWebmaster
Disallow: /

User-agent: Yandex
Disallow: /private-section/

The first rule blocks YandexWebmaster from your entire site, while the second applies to all Yandex bots for a specific directory. According to Yandex documentation, you should insert a blank line before each User-agent directive. Comments can be added using the # character.

Blocking Yandex bots will prevent your site from appearing in Yandex search results, which may reduce visibility for users of this search engine. If you only want to control crawl rate rather than block access entirely, Yandex.Webmaster offers a "Crawl rate" setting that allows you to manage how intensively Yandex bots visit your site.