---
schema_version: "newruntime-reader-dossiers-v1"
type: "reader_dossier"
slug: "youbot"
kind: "ai_answer"
operator: "You.com"
researched_at: "2026-10-23"
confidence: "high"
json_url: "https://newruntime.com/readers/youbot.json"
canonical_url: "https://newruntime.com/readers/youbot/"
---

# YouBot

> You.com's web crawler that discovers and indexes public pages to return real-time results in You.com's AI search.

## Dossier

- Kind: AI search & answer engines
- Operator: You.com (https://you.com/)
- Documentation: https://you.com/docs/youbot
- robots.txt tokens: YouBot
- Feeds: search index
- Respects robots.txt: Yes, per its documentation. Honors robots.txt incl. crawl-delay; caches robots.txt for 30 minutes.
- Verification: Published IP ranges and reverse DNS (https://you.com/docs/youbot)
- Labels matched in our logs: youbot

## Why it matters to New Runtime (our interpretation)

Indexes us for You.com's AI search and API, a retrieval source for third-party agents.

## Observed behaviour

- Baseline 2026-10-23 (93-day window): 8 requests on 2 days; first seen 2026-09-25, last seen 2026-10-21; Returning.
- Live numbers: https://newruntime.com/bot-traffic-history.json and https://newruntime.com/crawler-journeys.json

## Sources

- https://you.com/docs/youbot

Identity: A family name is what a client claims in its user agent. It is verified only when its request came from the operator's published IP ranges or passed forward-confirmed reverse DNS, as reported per family in /crawler-journeys.json. Anyone can claim any name.

All dossiers: https://newruntime.com/readers.md