YandexAdditionalBot
YandexAdditional is the crawler that Yandex — Russia's dominant search engine — sends back to pages already in its index to pull fresh content for YandexGPT (marketed as Neuro in Russia). It does not train the model from scratch; it grounds AI-generated answers in up-to-date sources at query time. If your business targets Russian-speaking audiences, allowing this bot to read your site improves your chances of appearing in those AI answers. For most businesses focused on Western markets, the practical impact is minimal either way.
- User-agent
YandexAdditionalBot- Does it respect robots.txt?
- Yes
- Official documentation
- https://yandex.com/support/webmaster/en/yandex-ai
How to allow it in your robots.txt
User-agent: YandexAdditionalBot
Allow: /How to block it (not recommended)
User-agent: YandexAdditionalBot
Disallow: /Frequently asked questions
Should I block YandexAdditionalBot?
It depends on whether the Russian market matters to you. If your customers are in Spain, Europe, or North America, blocking it has no downside. If you have or want customers in Russia, allowing it may help you show up in YandexGPT answers. For most small businesses outside Russia, either choice is equally fine.
Does it affect my visibility on ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity?
No. YandexAdditionalBot only feeds Yandex's own AI models. It has no connection to OpenAI, Google, or any other Western AI system. Blocking or allowing it will not change how you appear in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or any AI assistant outside the Yandex ecosystem.
How do I know if it is visiting my site, and how do I block it if I want to?
Check your server access logs for entries containing YandexAdditionalBot. To block it, add a Disallow directive under User-agent: YandexAdditionalBot in your robots.txt file. Yandex typically takes between 2 and 14 days to pick up the change after recrawling your site.