Overview
Yahoo Link Preview is a link preview bot from Yahoo used for link unfurling, rich-card generation, social previews, messaging previews, and page metadata fetching.
Its primary user-agent pattern is Yahoo Link Preview; related patterns include Yahoo preview bot; a representative HTTP user-agent is Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo Link Preview; https://help.yahoo.com/kb/mail/yahoo-link-preview-SLN23615.html).
Yahoo Link Preview is verified with Medium confidence. The identity type is Verified Bot, and the evidence basis is a public crawler reference or source-linked documentation.
Yahoo Link Preview is marked as not reliably governed by robots.txt directives; use server-side rules if the traffic should be restricted.
Yahoo Link Preview should be reviewed against site policy, source evidence, crawl rate, and requested paths before a permanent allow or block rule is created.
Identity
- User-Agent Pattern
-
Yahoo Link Preview - Aliases
- Yahoo preview bot
- HTTP Agent Examples
-
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo Link Preview; https://help.yahoo.com/kb/mail/yahoo-link-preview-SLN23615.html) - Robots Token
- Yahoo Link Preview
- Identity Type
- Verified bot
- Evidence Method
- Verify Yahoo Link Preview by matching `Yahoo Link Preview` to Yahoo evidence, then checking reverse DNS, source-network ownership, signed request data, or published crawler documentation when available.
Classification
- Type
- Preview
- Kind
- Preview
- Family
- Yahoo
- Purpose
- Preview
Behavior and handling
- Common Use
- Yahoo Link Preview is used for link unfurling, rich-card generation, social previews, messaging previews, and page metadata fetching.
- Detection Notes
- Yahoo Link Preview traffic is primarily detected by the `Yahoo Link Preview` user-agent pattern; related patterns include `Yahoo preview bot`; a representative HTTP user-agent is `Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo Link Preview; https://help.yahoo.com/kb/mail/yahoo-link-preview-SLN23615.html)`. Compare source IPs, reverse DNS, request paths, and crawl cadence with Yahoo infrastructure before trusting the traffic.
- Respects robots.txt
- No
- Spoofing Risk
- Yahoo Link Preview has medium spoofing risk because user-agent strings can be copied; pair the match with DNS, IP, behavior, or operator evidence.
- Risk
- Neutral
- Recommended Handling
- Depends
Rules and controls
- Robots.txt Snippet
-
# This agent may ignore robots.txt. Use authenticated access controls or network policy when blocking is required.
Relationships
- Operator
- Yahoo Checked 2026-06-23
Relationships without an Evidence link are normalized from the canonical directory record. They should not be interpreted as independent proof of physical presence or request origin.