Other · Yandex
YandexCheckBot user agent, IP ranges and robots.txt
YandexCheckBot is Yandex's other. It identifies itself with the YandexCheckBot user-agent token, applies robots.txt only in part, per its operator, and can be verified by reverse DNS (yandex.ru, yandex.net, yandex.com).
- Operator
- Yandex
- Reviewed
- September 2026
- Sources
- 1
- Operator
- Yandex
- User-agent token
- YandexCheckBot
- Purpose
- Other
- robots.txt token
- YandexCheckBot
- Honors robots.txt
- Partially, see notes
- Published IP ranges
- No official range file
- Verification
- Reverse DNS lookup on the requesting IP must return a host ending in yandex.ru, yandex.net or yandex.com, and a forward DNS lookup of that host must return the same IP. Yandex Webmaster also provides an IP address check tool.
- Reverse DNS suffix
- yandex.ru, yandex.net, yandex.com
- Full user-agent example
- Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexCheckBot/3.0; +http://yandex.com/bots)
Block or allow YandexCheckBot in robots.txt
User-agent: YandexCheckBot
Disallow: /User-agent: YandexCheckBot
Allow: /Verify a request is really YandexCheckBot
Anyone can put YandexCheckBot in a User-Agent header. Reverse DNS lookup on the requesting IP must return a host ending in yandex.ru, yandex.net or yandex.com, and a forward DNS lookup of that host must return the same IP. Yandex Webmaster also provides an IP address check tool.
host <request-ip>
# expect a hostname ending in yandex.ru, yandex.net, yandex.com
host <that-hostname>
# expect it to resolve back to <request-ip>What YandexCheckBot does
Yandex operates YandexCheckBot, which downloads pages from websites in different regions of the world to check their availability to users. It makes no indexing requests. The robots.txt token is YandexCheckBot, and general rules do not apply to it. Site owners verify it by reverse DNS to yandex.ru, yandex.net or yandex.com with forward DNS confirmation; Yandex publishes no IP list.
The user agent appears as "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexCheckBot/3.0; +http://yandex.com/bots)". Yandex says the robot downloads pages from different regions of the world to check whether they are available to users, and that it does not make indexing requests. A site owner will therefore see page downloads that come from Yandex hosts but do not feed the search index. Yandex does not document which regions the checks come from or how often they run, and it does not say how it selects pages.
Allowing YandexCheckBot lets Yandex run those availability checks against your pages. Blocking it under the YandexCheckBot token stops the checks but has no documented effect on indexing, because the robot does not make indexing requests in the first place. Yandex marks the general robots.txt rules column as No for this robot, so a "User-agent: *" Disallow does not reach it; you have to name YandexCheckBot in its own group. Yandex does not say whether the robot executes JavaScript or what it does with the availability results.
Operator note. It does not take into account the general rules in robots.txt.
Common questions
- Should I block YandexCheckBot?
- There is little documented reason to. The robot only checks page availability from different regions and does not make indexing requests, so blocking it neither protects nor removes anything from Yandex search. If you do block it, use a robots.txt group naming YandexCheckBot, since Yandex says general rules do not apply to it.
- Does YandexCheckBot affect my Yandex rankings?
- Yandex's documentation does not say. It states only that the robot downloads pages to check their availability to users and does not make indexing requests. No link between the availability checks and search ranking is documented.
- How do I verify YandexCheckBot?
- Do a reverse DNS lookup on the requesting IP; the host must end in yandex.ru, yandex.net or yandex.com. Then do a forward DNS lookup of that host and confirm it returns the same IP. Yandex Webmaster's IP address check tool does the same check. Yandex does not publish IP ranges.
Sources
The operator documentation used for this entry. Recorded review date September 2026; consult the linked pages for current policy and compare them with this dated snapshot.
This registry documents how operators describe their own bots so site owners can identify and control them. It does not publish third-party IP lists or guess at undocumented behaviour. To see how your own site responds to automated visitors, the bot detection scanner reads a URL's live response and names the protection it finds.