AI crawlers / YouBot
YouBot: what it is and how to block or charge it
YouBot is run by You.com. You.com's crawler for its AI search and assistant.
| Operator | You.com |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Indexes pages for AI search answers |
| User-agent contains | YouBot |
| Official IP list | None published, so it can only be recognized by name. Which crawlers publish one |
Block YouBot in robots.txt
User-agent: YouBot
Disallow: /robots.txt is a request, not a lock: well-behaved crawlers follow it. To block by user agent at the server, match YouBot in the User-Agent header.
Or charge YouBot per page
Instead of blocking it, answer YouBot with HTTP 402 Payment Required and a price. Crawlers and agents that support x402 pay a fraction of a cent in USDC straight to your wallet and get the page; people and search engines browse free. Set it up free on pay-per-crawl in about five minutes.
Is YouBot reading your site?
See the full list of AI crawlers. Facts here follow each operator's own documentation; tell us if one changes.