What is YahooSlurp?

YahooSlurp is a bot in the search engine crawlers category, operated by Yahoo.

Bot name
YahooSlurp
Operator
Yahoo
Type
Bot
Respects robots.txt
Yes
robots.txt user agent
Slurp
Main crawl location
United States (100%)
Reverse DNS
*.yahoo.com
Signs requests (Web Bot Auth)
No

About YahooSlurp

Yahoo! Slurp was the search engine crawler for Yahoo's search engine.

Search engine crawlers index your pages so they can appear in search results. Keep the genuine ones allowed and verify them, because fake search crawlers are one of the most common disguises for scrapers.

YahooSlurp user agent

Sample user agent strings sent by YahooSlurp:

  • Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)
  • Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp) sieve-gq1/1560642271-0

Anyone can copy a user agent string. Transfon Security also checks where each request comes from, so a request that claims to be a known crawler but comes from the wrong network is treated as a fake, not as the real crawler.

Where YahooSlurp crawls from

Share of YahooSlurp requests to sites protected by Transfon Security in the 7 days to 27 October 2026.

Countries

United States100%

Networks

Oath Holdings Inc. AS26101100%

How to verify YahooSlurp

Genuine YahooSlurp IPs resolve to hostnames ending in yahoo.com. Run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP, then a forward lookup on the hostname, and check both match:

host 203.0.113.10          # the IP from your logs
host crawl-name.yahoo.com  # must return the same IP

How to block YahooSlurp in robots.txt

YahooSlurp follows robots.txt, so these rules stop it crawling the paths you choose. robots.txt is a plain text file at the root of your domain, such as https://example.com/robots.txt.

Block YahooSlurp from the whole site

User-agent: Slurp
Disallow: /

Block YahooSlurp from some folders

User-agent: Slurp
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /search

Allow YahooSlurp only on some folders

User-agent: Slurp
Allow: /blog/
Disallow: /

Allow YahooSlurp and block other crawlers

User-agent: Slurp
Allow: /

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Things to know

  • Each host needs its own file. Rules on www.example.com do not apply to shop.example.com.
  • A crawler obeys only the most specific group that names it. Once you add a User-agent: Slurp group, YahooSlurp ignores your User-agent: * rules, so repeat any that should still apply.
  • The user agent name is not case sensitive. We take Slurp from YahooSlurp's user agent; check Yahoo's own documentation if it publishes a different robots.txt name.
  • Crawlers cache robots.txt, so changes can take up to a day to apply. Disallow stops crawling but does not remove pages already collected or indexed.

Limits of robots.txt

  1. YahooSlurp may not follow the rule. YahooSlurp says it follows robots.txt, but nothing enforces that. Changes can take a day to apply, the operator can change its policy, and other crawlers from Yahoo use different names and rules.
  2. The user agent could be fake. robots.txt matches the name a request claims. Anyone can send YahooSlurp's user agent, and a scraper using it is not bound by Yahoo's robots.txt policy. Only checking the source network tells a real YahooSlurp from a fake one: genuine requests resolve to *.yahoo.com.

Treat robots.txt as a statement of your policy, and enforce it where requests arrive.

Who should care about YahooSlurp

Publishers

YahooSlurp brings search traffic, so keep the real one allowed. Fake YahooSlurp requests are a common cover for scrapers, so verify it by network rather than by name.

Transfon Security for publishers

Media buyers and advertisers

Search crawlers fetch landing pages to check them. Keep YahooSlurp allowed, but out of campaign and conversion data.

Transfon Security for advertisers

E-commerce

YahooSlurp indexes products for search results. Allow it, and block impersonators that use its name to scrape prices.

Transfon Security for e-commerce

SaaS and APIs

Allow YahooSlurp on marketing and docs pages, and keep it off signed-in app pages it cannot use.

Transfon Security for SaaS and APIs

Block YahooSlurp with Transfon Security

robots.txt is a request, not an enforcement. Transfon Security shows YahooSlurp by name in the Top Bots report, so you can see how often it visits and which pages it reads. Block or allow it with a User Agent rule, or slow it down with a rate limit decision rule.

Transfon Security

Control YahooSlurp on your site

  • See every YahooSlurp visit and the pages it reads
  • Spot bots that fake trusted crawler names
  • Block, allow or rate limit YahooSlurp with one rule
  • Works with or without robots.txt support

Frequently asked questions

What is YahooSlurp?

YahooSlurp is a bot in the search engine crawlers category, operated by Yahoo. Yahoo! Slurp was the search engine crawler for Yahoo's search engine.

Does YahooSlurp respect robots.txt?

Yes. YahooSlurp follows robots.txt, so a Disallow rule for the Slurp user agent stops it from crawling the paths you list.

How do I block YahooSlurp?

Add "User-agent: Slurp" followed by "Disallow: /" to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. To enforce it, block requests whose user agent contains "Yahoo! Slurp" at your WAF. In Transfon Security that is one User Agent block rule.

Is robots.txt enough to block YahooSlurp?

No. robots.txt is voluntary, so YahooSlurp may not follow it, and anyone can send YahooSlurp's user agent, so a fake YahooSlurp ignores your rule. Enforce the rule where requests arrive, at your WAF, and check the source network.

How do I verify a real YahooSlurp request?

Run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP. Genuine YahooSlurp IPs resolve to a hostname ending in yahoo.com, and a forward lookup of that hostname returns the same IP. Anything else using its user agent is an impersonator.

Should I block YahooSlurp?

Search engine crawlers index your pages so they can appear in search results. Keep the genuine ones allowed and verify them, because fake search crawlers are one of the most common disguises for scrapers.

Related bots

All search engine crawlers · Full bot directory

See Which Bots Visit Your Site

Transfon Security identifies every bot in this directory in your traffic reports, flags fake search crawlers, and lets you allow, block or rate limit each bot.

Stay ahead of the publishing curve

Privacy, security, monetization, and performance insights. A few emails a month, no spam.

By subscribing you agree to our privacy policy.