Published on 2025-08-07T06:18:08Z

Daum bot

The Daum bot is the official web crawler for Daum, one of South Korea's leading search engines, operated by Kakao Corp. Its primary function is to discover and index web content to build Daum's search database. For website owners, particularly those targeting the South Korean market, being indexed by the Daum bot is important for gaining visibility and organic traffic from a Korean-speaking audience.

What is Daum bot?

The Daum bot, also known as Daumoa, is the official web crawler for the Daum search engine, a major internet platform in South Korea operated by Kakao Corp. It functions as a traditional search engine bot, systematically visiting websites to discover, index, and catalog content for Daum's search results. It identifies itself in server logs through various user-agent strings, with a common modern variant being Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Daum/4.1; +http://cs.daum.net/faq/15/4118.html?faqId=28966). The bot also has a specialized version for indexing images, Daumoa-image/1.0.

Why is Daum bot crawling my site?

The Daum bot crawls your website to discover and index your content for its search engine users. It is particularly interested in finding new pages and updated content that would be relevant to a Korean-language audience. The frequency of its visits depends on your site's popularity in South Korea, how often your content is updated, and its relevance to Korean users. This crawling activity is a normal and authorized part of search engine operations, similar to how Googlebot operates.

What is the purpose of Daum bot?

The purpose of the Daum bot is to support the Daum search engine by maintaining a comprehensive and up-to-date index of web content. The data it collects is used to build the search index that powers Daum's web, image, and news search services, which primarily serve Korean-speaking users. For website owners, being included in Daum's index provides the significant benefit of making your content discoverable to this audience, which is particularly valuable for businesses targeting the South Korean market.

How do I block Daum bot?

If your target audience is outside of South Korea and you wish to prevent the Daum bot from accessing your site, you can add a rule to your robots.txt file.

To block the Daum bot, add the following lines to your robots.txt file. There are several user-agents associated with the bot, so you may need to block them individually. A common one is Daum.

User-agent: Daum
Disallow: /

How to verify the authenticity of the user-agent operated by Kakao Corporation?

Reverse IP lookup technique

To verify user-agent authenticity, you can use host linux command two times with the IP address of the requester.
  1. > host IPAddressOfRequest
    This command returns the reverse lookup hostname (e.g., 4.4.8.8.in-addr.arpa.). 
  2. > host ReverseDNSFromTheOutputOfFirstRequest
If the output matches the original IP address and the domain is associated with a trusted operator (e.g., Kakao Corporation), the user-agent can be considered legitimate.

IP list lookup technique

Some operators provide a public list of IP addresses used by their crawlers. This list can be cross-referenced to verify a user-agent's authenticity. However, both operators and website owners may find it challenging to maintain an up-to-date list, so use this method with caution and in conjunction with other verification techniques.