What is YouBot?
YouBot is You.com's search crawler. Search crawlers build the index a search or answer product draws on.
| Operator | You.com |
|---|---|
| Purpose (operator wording) | search index |
| robots.txt token | YouBot |
| User agent string | Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; YouBot/1.0; +https://docs.you.com/youbot; env:prod) Chrome/X.X.X.X Safari/537.36 |
| Respects robots.txt | Yes |
| IP ranges | No JSON list. Docs page states a single range: 68.67.112.0/24 (https://docs.you.com/youbot) |
| Last verified |
What else should I know about YouBot?
What is the YouBot user agent string?
This is the user agent string You.com documents for YouBot, as of October 29, 2026. Version numbers and details can change, so match on the token in robots.txt, not on the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; YouBot/1.0; +https://docs.you.com/youbot; env:prod) Chrome/X.X.X.X Safari/537.36How do I block YouBot in robots.txt?
Add this group to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. It asks YouBot to stay out of every page.
User-agent: YouBot
Disallow: /To allow it explicitly, for example while a broader rule blocks other bots:
User-agent: YouBot
Allow: /Does blocking YouBot affect AI answers?
You.com does not say what blocking YouBot changes. That is not stated.
Does YouBot follow robots.txt?
Yes. You.com docs: 'It respects robots.txt directives and crawl rate preferences'; honors crawl-delay; caches robots.txt for 30 minutes.
Robots.txt is a request, not a lock (RFC 9309).
What IP addresses does YouBot use?
No JSON list. Docs page states a single range: 68.67.112.0/24 (https://docs.you.com/youbot). Without a published list you cannot verify YouBot by address, so a rule at your server cannot rely on one.
What should I read next?
Next: give AI tools something to quote
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