# YandexScreenshotBot

YandexScreenshotBot is a specialized web crawler from the Russian search engine Yandex that captures visual snapshots of web pages. These screenshots are then used to generate the thumbnail previews that appear next to search results in Yandex Search. This feature enhances the user experience and can potentially increase click-through rates for website owners.

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## What is YandexScreenshotBot?

YandexScreenshotBot is a web crawler from Yandex that is designed to capture visual snapshots of web pages for use as thumbnail previews in its search results. The bot identifies itself in server logs with a user-agent string like `Mozilla/5.0 (...) YandexScreenshotBot/3.0; (...)`. It uses a Chromium-based rendering engine to fully execute JavaScript and render CSS, ensuring that the screenshots accurately represent how a page appears to a user. It is more resource-intensive than a text-only crawler.


## Why is YandexScreenshotBot crawling my site?

YandexScreenshotBot is crawling your site to create visual snapshots for its search result previews. The frequency of visits depends on factors like your site's popularity and content update schedule. Websites targeting Russian-speaking audiences are likely to see more frequent visits. This is an authorized and standard activity for a search engine that provides visual previews.


## What is the purpose of YandexScreenshotBot?

The purpose of YandexScreenshotBot is to generate the thumbnail images that appear alongside search results, which provides users with a visual preview of a website before they click. This can improve the user experience and help users quickly identify relevant content. For website owners, an attractive preview can increase click-through rates from Yandex users. The bot also helps with quality assurance for Yandex's ad network and can be used to detect duplicate content.


## How do I block YandexScreenshotBot?

To prevent YandexScreenshotBot from taking screenshots of your site, you can add a specific disallow rule to your `robots.txt` file. This may result in no visual preview for your site in Yandex's search results.

To block this bot, add the following lines to your `robots.txt` file:

```
User-agent: YandexScreenshotBot
Disallow: /
```


## Related agents and operators


## Canonical

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