What is YepBot?
YepBot is a web crawler operated by Ahrefs that supports Yep, a search engine providing web search results for human users and AI agents. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when YepBot visits your website.
Category
| Example User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YepBot/1.0; +http://yep.com/yepbot/) |
| Operated By | Ahrefs |
| Source | Official Website |
| Triggered By | Automated crawl |
| Used for AI Model Training | Not expected |
| Affects AI Chat & Search Visibility | Yes |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
Why Is YepBot Visiting My Website?
YepBot is updating an AI search index so your pages can appear in its results. It may have discovered your site through links, a sitemap, or mentions of your domain.
Should I Block YepBot?
Usually not. Blocking YepBot keeps your pages out of its AI search results and can eliminate referral traffic from that channel. It does not improve traditional search rankings. For context, 8% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for YepBot.
How Do I Block YepBot Using Robots.txt?
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block YepBot from accessing your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all AI search crawlers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: YepBot # https://knownagents.com/agents/yepbot
Disallow: /Insights for YepBot
As of November 9, 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 Compliance
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
YepBot Traffic
Frequently Asked Questions
What Traffic Patterns Should I Expect From YepBot?
YepBot revisits your site on a flexible schedule, often requesting several pages in a burst. Activity usually increases when your content changes or its index refreshes, with quiet intervals between crawl passes.
Does YepBot Follow Robots.txt Rules?
YepBot is expected to follow robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the appropriate first step if you want to block it. Automatic Robots.txt can add and maintain that rule, while Agent Analytics lets you verify whether YepBot respects it.
Is YepBot Used for AI Model Training?
Not ordinarily. YepBot is not categorized as an AI training scraper or data provider, so AI model training is not its expected purpose.
Does Blocking YepBot Affect AI Search or Citations?
Yes. Blocking YepBot can keep your pages out of the AI search index it supplies, reducing their eligibility to appear or be cited in that product's answers.
Does YepBot Access Private Content?
No special access. YepBot can reach only content available to anonymous visitors. Make sure staging sites and other sensitive areas require authentication.
How Can I Verify a Request From YepBot?
Agent Analytics tracks YepBot visits in real time. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "YepBot". Look for bursts that follow links across several pages and recur over time. Because YepBot does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.
How Is YepBot Different From Other Ahrefs Agents?
Ahrefs operates separate agents for different purposes, so each agent should be evaluated and controlled independently.
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