What Is YouBot?

YouBot is a web crawler used by You.com to index search results that allow their AI Assistant to answer user questions. The assistant's answers normally contain references to the website as inline sources. You can see how often YouBot visits your website by setting up Dark Visitors Agent Analytics.

Agent Type

Expected Behavior

AI search crawlers index websites to power AI-driven search engines, similar to how traditional search crawlers work for Google or Bing. They regularly scan sites to build and update their index, with crawl frequency varying based on content freshness, site authority, and perceived importance. Unlike traditional search engines with relatively predictable crawl schedules, AI search crawlers may visit more sporadically or in bursts depending on their algorithmic indexing priorities.

Detail

User Agent String

Access other known user agent strings and recent IP addresses using the API.

Robots.txt

In this example, all pages are blocked. You can customize which pages are off-limits by swapping out / for a different disallowed path.

User-agent: YouBot # https://darkvisitors.com/agents/youbot
Disallow: /

Frequently Asked Questions About YouBot

Should I Block YouBot?

Generally no. YouBot enables users to discover your content through an AI-powered search engine. These platforms typically provide attribution and link back to original sources, potentially driving traffic to your site. Blocking it may reduce your visibility in those AI search results.

How Do I Block YouBot?

If you want to, you can block or limit YouBot's access by configuring user agent token rules in your robots.txt file. The best way to do this is using Automatic Robots.txt, which blocks all agents of this type and updates continuously as new agents are released. While the vast majority of agents operated by reputable companies honor these robots.txt directives, bad actors may choose to ignore them entirely. In that case, you'll need to implement alternative blocking methods such as firewall rules or server-level restrictions. You can verify whether YouBot is respecting your rules by setting up Agent Analytics to monitor its visits to your website.

Will Blocking YouBot Hurt My SEO?

Blocking AI search crawlers will likely hurt your SEO performance in AI-powered search engines. As these platforms gain market share, preventing indexing could significantly reduce your visibility in AI search results and organic traffic from users who prefer AI-powered search interfaces.

Does YouBot Access Private Content?

AI search crawlers generally only index publicly accessible content, similar to traditional search engines. They typically respect authentication barriers and don't attempt to access private content behind login walls. However, they may index content that's publicly accessible but not intended for search engines, such as staging environments or development sites if they're not gated properly.

How Can I Tell if YouBot Is Visiting My Website?

Setting up Agent Analytics will give you realtime visibility into YouBot visiting your website, along with hundreds of other AI agents, crawlers, and scrapers. This will also let you measure human traffic to your website coming from AI search and chat LLM platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

Why Is YouBot Visiting My Website?

YouBot discovered your site through standard web discovery methods like following links from other indexed sites, processing your sitemap, or finding references to your domain elsewhere on the web. Your site was selected for indexing to make your content searchable through their AI-powered search engine.

How Can I Authenticate Visits From YouBot?

Agent Analytics authenticates agent visits from many agents, letting you know whether each one was actually from that agent, or spoofed by a bad actor. This helps you identify suspicious traffic patterns and make informed decisions about blocking or allowing specific user agents.

References

• https://about.you.com/youbot/