YandexMobileBot
Yandex •
Web Crawler
What is YandexMobileBot?
Yandex says YandexMobileBot identifies pages whose layouts suit mobile devices and publishes this example header. The older iPhone and Safari version is part of its documented example, not a claim that every live request still uses those browser bytes. Yandex marks it as not taking general robots.txt rules into account and shows that a bot-specific group may be needed to restrict it.
User Agent String
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/12B411 Safari/600.1.4 (compatible; YandexMobileBot/3.0; +http://yandex.com/bots)
How to Control YandexMobileBot
Block Completely
To prevent YandexMobileBot from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block YandexMobileBot
User-agent: YandexMobileBot
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: YandexMobileBot
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: YandexMobileBot
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify YandexMobileBot
Verification Method:
Use forward-confirmed reverse DNS under Yandex's documented domains; do not treat the mobile browser appearance as identity proof.
Use forward-confirmed reverse DNS under Yandex's documented domains; do not treat the mobile browser appearance as identity proof.
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect YandexMobileBot in your application:
Basic Pattern
/YandexMobileBot/i
Strict Pattern
/^Mozilla\/5\.0 \(iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_1 like Mac OS X\) AppleWebKit\/600\.1\.4 \(KHTML, like Gecko\) Version\/8\.0 Mobile\/12B411 Safari\/600\.1\.4 \(compatible; YandexMobileBot\/3\.0; \+http\:\/\/yandex\.com\/bots\)$/
Flexible Pattern
/YandexMobileBot[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/i
Vendor Match
/.*Yandex.*YandexMobileBot/i
Implementation Examples
// PHP Detection for YandexMobileBot
function detect_yandexmobilebot() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/YandexMobileBot/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('YandexMobileBot 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($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for YandexMobileBot
import re
from flask import request, make_response
def detect_yandexmobilebot():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'YandexMobileBot'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False
# Django Middleware
class yandexmobilebotMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for YandexMobileBot
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
// Middleware to detect YandexMobileBot
function detect_yandexmobilebot(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /YandexMobileBot/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('YandexMobileBot detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'YandexMobileBot';
}
next();
}
app.use(detect_yandexmobilebot);
# Apache .htaccess rules for YandexMobileBot
# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} YandexMobileBot [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} YandexMobileBot [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]
# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "YandexMobileBot" is_bot=1
# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /YandexMobileBot/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for YandexMobileBot
# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_yandexmobilebot {
default 0;
~*YandexMobileBot 1;
}
server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_yandexmobilebot) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_yandexmobilebot) {
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_yandexmobilebot) {
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: YandexMobileBot
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: YandexMobileBot
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: YandexMobileBot
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
YandexMobileBot
Robots.txt Name
YandexMobileBot
Category
search
Respects robots.txt
May not respect
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