YandexSitelinks
Yandex •
Web Crawler
What is YandexSitelinks?
Yandex lists this distinctive header, including the Dyatel component, for a robot that checks availability of pages used as sitelinks. It is not the primary YandexBot indexer. Yandex's table says YandexSitelinks takes general robots.txt rules into account. The exact agent name can be used for a narrower robots policy if a publisher wishes to distinguish it from other Yandex traffic.
User Agent String
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexSitelinks; Dyatel; +http://yandex.com/bots)
How to Control YandexSitelinks
Block Completely
To prevent YandexSitelinks from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block YandexSitelinks
User-agent: YandexSitelinks
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: YandexSitelinks
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: YandexSitelinks
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify YandexSitelinks
Verification Method:
Confirm the source using Yandex-domain reverse DNS followed by a forward lookup to the original IP.
Confirm the source using Yandex-domain reverse DNS followed by a forward lookup to the original IP.
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect YandexSitelinks in your application:
Basic Pattern
/YandexSitelinks/i
Strict Pattern
/^Mozilla\/5\.0 \(compatible; YandexSitelinks; Dyatel; \+http\:\/\/yandex\.com\/bots\)$/
Flexible Pattern
/YandexSitelinks[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/i
Vendor Match
/.*Yandex.*YandexSitelinks/i
Implementation Examples
// PHP Detection for YandexSitelinks
function detect_yandexsitelinks() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/YandexSitelinks/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('YandexSitelinks 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($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for YandexSitelinks
import re
from flask import request, make_response
def detect_yandexsitelinks():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'YandexSitelinks'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False
# Django Middleware
class yandexsitelinksMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for YandexSitelinks
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
// Middleware to detect YandexSitelinks
function detect_yandexsitelinks(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /YandexSitelinks/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('YandexSitelinks detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'YandexSitelinks';
}
next();
}
app.use(detect_yandexsitelinks);
# Apache .htaccess rules for YandexSitelinks
# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} YandexSitelinks [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} YandexSitelinks [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]
# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "YandexSitelinks" is_bot=1
# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /YandexSitelinks/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for YandexSitelinks
# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_yandexsitelinks {
default 0;
~*YandexSitelinks 1;
}
server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_yandexsitelinks) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_yandexsitelinks) {
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_yandexsitelinks) {
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: YandexSitelinks
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: YandexSitelinks
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: YandexSitelinks
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
YandexSitelinks
Robots.txt Name
YandexSitelinks
Category
search
Respects robots.txt
Yes
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