Slurp
Yahoo •
Since 2004
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Official Docs
What is Slurp?
Slurp is Yahoo's long-running web crawler used to index pages for Yahoo Search. While Yahoo Search is now largely powered by Bing, Slurp still occasionally crawls web pages for Yahoo's various services. The bot has been active since the early days of web search and respects robots.txt directives. Website owners can control Slurp's access through standard robots.txt rules using the 'Slurp' user agent name.
User Agent String
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)
How to Control Slurp
Block Completely
To prevent Slurp from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block Slurp
User-agent: Slurp
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: Slurp
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /public/
Set Crawl Delay
To slow down the crawl rate (note: not all bots respect this directive):
User-agent: Slurp
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify Slurp
Verification Method:
Reverse DNS lookup should resolve to crawl.yahoo.net
Reverse DNS lookup should resolve to crawl.yahoo.net
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect Slurp in your application:
Basic Pattern
/Slurp/i
Strict Pattern
/^Mozilla/5\.0 \(compatible; Yahoo\! Slurp; http\://help\.yahoo\.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp\)$/
Flexible Pattern
/Slurp[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/i
Vendor Match
/.*Yahoo.*Slurp/i
Implementation Examples
// PHP Detection for Slurp
function detect_slurp() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/Slurp/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('Slurp detected from IP: ' . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
// Set cache headers
header('Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600');
header('X-Robots-Tag: noarchive');
// Optional: Serve cached version
if (file_exists('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html')) {
readfile('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for Slurp
import re
from flask import request, make_response
def detect_slurp():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'Slurp'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False
# Django Middleware
class SlurpMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for Slurp
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
// Middleware to detect Slurp
function detectSlurp(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /Slurp/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('Slurp detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'Slurp';
}
next();
}
app.use(detectSlurp);
# Apache .htaccess rules for Slurp
# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Slurp [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Slurp [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]
# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "Slurp" is_bot=1
# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Slurp/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for Slurp
# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_slurp {
default 0;
~*Slurp 1;
}
server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_slurp) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_slurp) {
root /var/www/cached;
try_files $uri $uri.html $uri/index.html @backend;
}
try_files $uri @backend;
}
# Add headers for bot requests
location @backend {
if ($is_slurp) {
add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600";
add_header X-Robots-Tag "noarchive";
}
proxy_pass http://backend;
}
}
Should You Block This Bot?
Recommendations based on your website type:
| Site Type | Recommendation | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | Allow | Essential for product visibility in search results |
| Blog/News | Allow | Increases content reach and discoverability |
| SaaS Application | Block | No benefit for application interfaces; preserve resources |
| Documentation | Allow | Improves documentation discoverability for developers |
| Corporate Site | Allow | Allow for public pages, block sensitive areas like intranets |
Advanced robots.txt Configurations
E-commerce Site Configuration
User-agent: Slurp
Crawl-delay: 5
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /*?sort=
Disallow: /*?filter=
Disallow: /*&page=
Allow: /products/
Allow: /categories/
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
Publishing/Blog Configuration
User-agent: Slurp
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: Slurp
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
Slurp
Robots.txt Name
Slurp
Category
search
Respects robots.txt
Yes
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