What is Yahoo Link Preview?
Yahoo Link Preview bot fetches metadata and preview data from URLs shared on Yahoo platforms and services. Supports Yahoo's social features, news aggregation, and content discovery across their ecosystem of web properties. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Yahoo |
| Source | Official Website |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | No |
| Insights Last Updated | August 11, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
Yahoo Link Preview usually makes a single request within seconds of a URL being shared, without crawling further. Traffic rises and falls with sharing activity, so a widely circulated link can produce a sharp burst of fetches.
Yahoo Link Preview's User Agent
| User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo Link Preview; https://help.yahoo.com/kb/mail/yahoo-link-preview-SLN23615.html) |
How To Block Yahoo Link Preview With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to request that Yahoo Link Preview not access your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to request the same of all fetchers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: Yahoo Link Preview # https://knownagents.com/agents/yahoo-link-preview
Disallow: /Global Statistics for Yahoo Link Preview
As of August 11, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocking Trend
0% of top websites block Yahoo Link Preview in their robots.txt files.
Overall Fetcher Traffic
2.6% of all web traffic came from fetchers.
Top Visited Website Categories
The types of websites most frequently visited by Yahoo Link Preview.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block Yahoo Link Preview?
Usually not. Blocking Yahoo Link Preview may leave shared links without a title or image, making them less inviting to click. If it begins fetching at unexpected volume, try rate limiting before blocking it outright. Almost none of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for Yahoo Link Preview.
Does Yahoo Link Preview Follow Robots.txt Rules?
No. Yahoo Link Preview is not expected to follow robots.txt directives, so a disallow rule only communicates your preference. Enforce the block with firewall or server rules, then use Agent Analytics to verify that its requests stop.
Does Yahoo Link Preview Access Private Content?
No. Yahoo Link Preview has no credentials and should access only the public URL and assets needed for a preview. It does not continue through the rest of your site.
Why Is Yahoo Link Preview Visiting My Website?
Someone shared a link to your page. Yahoo Link Preview fetched it to build a preview card, and each new share may trigger another request. A spike often means your content is circulating more widely.
How Can I Tell if Yahoo Link Preview Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks Yahoo Link Preview visits in real time alongside every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "Yahoo Link Preview". Look for a page and its preview assets being requested without follow-up navigation. Because Yahoo Link Preview does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.