01 · Operator
Who operates YaCy Bot
- Company
- YaCy (community project)
- Official docs
- yacy.net
02 · Behavior
What YaCy Bot does
Each YaCy installation can crawl the web and share its index with other peers. Requests therefore come from many unrelated IPs and operators. YaCy follows the rules in robots.txt.
03 · Impact
Why YaCy Bot matters for your site
If you allow it
- Feeds a decentralized, non-commercial search engine
- Follows robots.txt
If you block it
- Little search traffic in practice
- Crawlers run by unknown individual users
04 · Allow
How to allow YaCy Bot
robots.txt
User-agent: yacybot
Allow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "yacybot")
Action: Skip › All Super Bot Fight Mode rules
# Also check Security › Bots: "Block AI bots" can block it regardless of robots.txt.WordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: yacybot
Allow: /nginx
# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "yacybot") { return 403; }Apache
# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} yacybot [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]05 · Block
How to block YaCy Bot
YaCy Bot follows robots.txt, so one rule is enough. Use a server or CDN rule only to stop spoofed copies.
robots.txt
User-agent: yacybot
Disallow: /Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "yacybot")
Action: BlockWordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: yacybot
Disallow: /nginx
# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "yacybot") {
return 403;
}Apache
# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} yacybot [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>06 · User agents
User agents we see for YaCy Bot
The user agent published by the operator:
yacybot (/global; amd64 Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64; java 1.8.0_91; Europe/en) http://yacy.net/bot.html07 · Verification
Is it really YaCy Bot?
YaCy Bot’s operator publishes no IP ranges or hostnames, so requests cannot be verified. Treat the user agent as a claim, and watch your logs for unusual request rates.
FAQ
Questions about YaCy Bot
What is yacybot?
It is the user agent of YaCy, a peer-to-peer search engine. Many independent YaCy users run these crawlers.
Does yacybot respect robots.txt?
Yes. YaCy documents that it follows the rules defined in robots.txt.
How do I block yacybot?
Add "User-agent: yacybot" and "Disallow: /" to your robots.txt.
Last reviewed Oct 8, 2026