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YouBot user agent

Operated by You.com · Live answers · Answering you

robots.txt token
YouBot

YouBot identifies itself with the token YouBot. That is the case-insensitive substring to grep for in access logs, and the exact name to put after User-agent: in robots.txt. It fetches a page live, at the moment a user asks something.

Allow or block YouBot in robots.txt

Robots.txt applies the most specific matching group, so a group naming YouBot overrides your User-agent: * rules for this bot alone.

Allow
User-agent: YouBot
Allow: /
Block
User-agent: YouBot
Disallow: /

What blocking costs you: You.com search and assistant can't cite your pages.

To see which AI crawlers your robots.txt allows right now, run your domain through the AI crawler access checker. To check whether AI answers actually cite you, use the AI citation checker.

FAQ

What is the YouBot user agent?
YouBot announces itself with the User-Agent token "YouBot". That token is the case-insensitive substring to match in server logs and the exact name to put after "User-agent:" in robots.txt. You.com does not publish one fixed full string, so match on the token rather than the whole line.
Who operates YouBot and what does it collect?
YouBot is run by You.com and fetches a page live, at the moment a user asks something. In the AI picture that puts it under "Answering you": A live user prompt made an AI fetch your page to answer.
How do I block YouBot?
Add a robots.txt group naming the token exactly: User-agent: YouBot followed by Disallow: /. Robots.txt matches the most specific group, so a YouBot group overrides whatever your User-agent: * group says. You.com search and assistant can't cite your pages.
Should I block YouBot?
That depends on what you lose. You.com search and assistant can't cite your pages. Sites chasing AI citations usually keep the live-answer and AI-search bots open and make a separate decision about the training crawlers. Run your domain through the AI crawler access checker to see which ones your robots.txt lets in today.
Can YouBot be spoofed?
Yes. A User-Agent header is self-reported, so any scraper can claim to be YouBot. The token is fine for reporting and for robots.txt, but if you are rate-limiting or firewalling on it, verify the request IP against You.com's published ranges before you trust the name.

Paste a full User-Agent line and identify any crawler with the AI bot user agent list and lookup, or see every token side by side.