YaK (Linkfluence) User Agent: What It Is & How to Block It

01 · Operator

Who operates YaK

Company: Linkfluence (now Meltwater)
Type: Other bot

02 · Behavior

What YaK does

YaK collects public web content for consumer intelligence analysis. The linkfluence.com domain now redirects to Meltwater consumer intelligence. That product applies AI and data science to a live feed of global data sources.

03 · Impact

Why YaK matters for your site

If you allow it

Lets your content appear in brand monitoring reports

If you block it

Brings no direct visitors
Commercial data collection

04 · Allow

How to allow YaK

robots.txt

User-agent: YaK
Allow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "YaK")
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: YaK
Allow: /

nginx

# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "YaK") { return 403; }

Apache

# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} YaK [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]

05 · Block

How to block YaK

Start with robots.txt. If YaK keeps showing up in your logs, block it at your CDN or web server.

robots.txt

User-agent: YaK
Disallow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "YaK")
Action:     Block

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: YaK
Disallow: /

nginx

# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "YaK") {
    return 403;
}

Apache

# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} YaK [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>

06 · User agents

User agents we see for YaK

The user agent published by the operator:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YaK/1.0; http://linkfluence.com/; bot@linkfluence.com)

07 · Verification

Is it really YaK?

YaK’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 YaK

Who operates the YaK crawler?

YaK belongs to Linkfluence. Linkfluence.com now redirects to Meltwater, which lists the bot as its operator.

How do I block YaK?

Add "User-agent: YaK" and "Disallow: /" to robots.txt, or block the user agent on your server.

YaK is Linkfluence (now Meltwater)’s other bot