Search engine crawler · Yandex
YandexFavicons user agent, IP ranges and robots.txt
YandexFavicons is Yandex's search engine crawler. It identifies itself with the YandexFavicons 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
- YandexFavicons
- Purpose
- Search engine crawler
- robots.txt token
- YandexFavicons
- 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; YandexFavicons/1.0; +http://yandex.com/bots)
Block or allow YandexFavicons in robots.txt
User-agent: YandexFavicons
Disallow: /User-agent: YandexFavicons
Allow: /Verify a request is really YandexFavicons
Anyone can put YandexFavicons 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 YandexFavicons does
YandexFavicons is the Yandex agent that downloads a site's favicon file to display in search results. Yandex says general robots.txt rules do not apply to it; it has its own YandexFavicons token. Verify requests by reverse DNS to a hostname ending in yandex.ru, yandex.net or yandex.com, confirmed with forward DNS. Yandex publishes no IP list.
Log entries from this agent show the user-agent Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexFavicons/1.0; +http://yandex.com/bots). Yandex says the agent downloads the site's favicon file to display in search results, and that is the whole documented purpose. Yandex does not document how often the agent visits or whether it executes JavaScript. Yandex lists the agent on its page for checking Yandex robots, which is also where it documents the DNS verification steps for this agent.
Blocking YandexFavicons means Yandex cannot fetch the icon it displays in search results, which is the only consequence Yandex documents; it says nothing about indexing or ranking effects. Yandex states that general robots.txt rules do not apply to this agent, and a group addressed to the YandexFavicons token is the documented way to control it. A site owner who wants the favicon shown in Yandex results has no documented reason to block it.
Operator note. It does not take into account the general rules in robots.txt.
Common questions
- Should I block YandexFavicons?
- There is no documented reason to. The agent fetches your favicon so Yandex can display it in search results, and blocking it stops Yandex fetching that icon. Yandex documents no other effect. If you do want to block it, write a rule for the YandexFavicons token, since Yandex says general robots.txt rules do not apply to it.
- How do I verify YandexFavicons?
- Reverse-resolve the requesting IP and check that the hostname ends in yandex.ru, yandex.net or yandex.com, then do a forward lookup on that hostname and confirm it points back to the same IP. Yandex also has an IP address check tool in Yandex Webmaster. Yandex does not publish an IP range list for this agent.
- Does YandexFavicons run JavaScript?
- Yandex's documentation for this agent does not say. Its stated job is to download the favicon file; Yandex does not document whether the agent executes scripts or parses HTML to locate that file.
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.