Yandex Feed

Yandex Feed in context

Yandex Feed is a search engine crawler operated by Yandex. In plain terms, it builds a search or answer index. Our database files it under search engines and ranks it Tier 3, mid-priority crawlers with a clear purpose but a smaller audience. 62 of the 63 search engines in our database share this tier.

Its safety rating is safe and its blocking impact is not documented. So the decision about Yandex Feed rests on what you want from Yandex, not on its behaviour. How we rate safety and impact.

How site owners treat Yandex Feed

Our robots.txt study of the Tranco top 10,000 did not track YandexFeed as a named token, so we do not publish an adoption figure for it. If you run a large site, your own logs are the best evidence of how often it visits.

Does it follow robots.txt?

Yandex Feed's operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the Yandex Feed rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop.

Yandex crawlers and close alternatives

Yandex Feed is one of 39 Yandex crawlers in our database. A User-agent: YandexFeed group controls Yandex Feed only; the other Yandex tokens below need their own lines.

• YandexFeed: this crawler (Tier 3)
• YaDirectFetcher: Yandex Direct Fetcher, checks pages for an SEO, uptime or analytics service (Tier 3)
• Yandex: Yandex, builds a search or answer index (Tier 3)
• YandexAccessibilityBot: Yandex Accessibility, builds a search or answer index (Tier 3)
• YandexAdditional: YandexAdditional, builds a search or answer index (Tier 3)
• YandexAdditionalBot: YandexAdditionalBot, builds a search or answer index (Tier 3)
• YandexAdNet: Yandex Advertising Network, checks pages for an SEO, uptime or analytics service (Tier 3)
• YandexBlogs: Yandex Blogs, builds a search or answer index (Tier 3)
• YandexBot: Yandex Search, builds a search or answer index (Tier 3)

To give Yandex Feed the same answer as its siblings, stack User-agent: YandexFeed with their lines above one set of rules; to treat Yandex Feed differently, give it its own group.

Other search engines that do the same job (builds a search or answer index) include Amzn-SearchBot from Amazon, Applebot from Apple, baidu from Baidu, Baiduspider from Baidu, Baiduspider-favo from Baidu, Baiduspider-image from Baidu. Deciding about Yandex Feed is usually a decision about the whole group, so check how your file treats these too.

We first recorded YandexFeed on September 22, 2026. Yandex documents it on yandex.com, and we recheck that page before each release.

Which rule Yandex Feed actually follows

Yandex Feed reads exactly one group in robots.txt, the most specific one that names YandexFeed, and never combines rules across groups. This short file shows the trap:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/

User-agent: YandexFeed
Disallow: /drafts/

1. Find the group. Yandex Feed looks for a group naming YandexFeed. One exists, so it ignores User-agent: * completely.
2. Apply only that group. It is refused /drafts/ and nothing else.
3. The surprise. /private/ is open to Yandex Feed, because that rule lives in the * group it no longer reads. To keep it out of both, repeat Disallow: /private/ inside its own group.

Should you allow Yandex Feed? Decide by situation

Check Yandex Feed on your own site

1. Open /robots.txt on your domain and search for YandexFeed. If it is not named, it follows User-agent: *.
2. List the Disallow lines in the group Yandex Feed follows and test your key URLs against them; the longest match wins, and Allow wins a tie.
3. Look beyond the file. A firewall or bot manager can refuse Yandex Feed even when robots.txt allows it, and that never shows in the file.
4. Run our LLM crawler checker to see how Yandex Feed and every other crawler we track are treated in one pass, including firewall refusals.