Daum crawler — Korean portal (Kakao)
Daum is a major South Korean web portal, now operated under Kakao, offering search alongside news, mail, and community services. It runs a search crawler that self-identifies with a Daum token. It is a regional search-engine indexer, important for reaching Korean-market audiences.
What this means
Daum is one of South Korea's major web portals, now part of Kakao, offering search alongside email, news, maps, and community services. Its crawler fetches public pages to build the index behind Daum search. Allowing it supports visibility for Korean-market audiences.
In Korea, Naver dominates search, but Daum (Kakao) remains a significant second portal, so both matter for sites targeting Korean users.
How the Daum crawler identifies itself
Daum's crawler self-identifies with a Daum token and a self-identifying URL in its user-agent string. Because Daum's English-language crawler documentation is limited and the Kakao integration has evolved, this entry is marked partially verified — match on the Daum token but confirm the current value and operator in Daum/Kakao webmaster materials.
The user agent is a claim that can be copied; verify where authenticity matters.
- robots.txt token: Daum's documented crawler token (verify current value)
- User agent contains a Daum-identifying URL
- A regional search-engine indexer for the Korean market (Kakao)
robots.txt considerations
Daum's crawler is expected to honour robots.txt like other search engines. To disallow it site-wide, target its token with a standard Disallow rule.
Blocking Daum removes your pages from its index, which is usually undesirable if you target Korean users. robots.txt is a request honoured by compliant crawlers, not an access-control mechanism.
How it appears in analytics and logs
A request carrying a Daum token is Daum's search crawler fetching a URL for its index — a bot event, not a human visit. Because it is a regional search-engine indexer, blocking it can remove your pages from Daum search in the Korean market.
Diagnostic use case
Confirm Daum's crawler is indexing your site for Korean search, keep it allowed for that market, and distinguish it from SEO tool crawlers.
What WebmasterID can help detect
WebmasterID classifies Daum's crawler server-side as a search bot and surfaces its activity on the bot-intelligence surface, separate from human analytics, so you can see Korean search-engine crawl coverage without log parsing.
Common mistakes
- Blocking Daum's crawler and dropping out of Korean-market search via Daum.
- Confusing Daum with Naver's Yeti crawler — they are separate portals.
- Assuming a fixed token without checking current Daum/Kakao docs.
Privacy and accuracy notes
Daum crawler detection uses only the request user-agent. No human identity is involved. WebmasterID records the crawl as a bot event, separate from human analytics, and never attaches it to a visitor profile.
Related pages
- Naver Yeti — South Korea search crawler
Yeti is the web crawler operated by Naver, the search and content portal that holds a leading share of search in South Korea. Its robots.txt token is Yeti. Naver provides webmaster tooling and documentation, much of it in Korean, so some specifics are marked partially verified.
- Regional search engines overview
In several markets a regional search engine leads instead of Google: Yandex in Russian-language search, Baidu in China, Naver in South Korea, Seznam in the Czech Republic, and Coc Coc in Vietnam. Recognising their crawlers matters because being indexed by them is how you reach those audiences.
- Goo search crawler — Japanese portal
Goo is a long-running Japanese web portal that offers search alongside dictionaries, news, and other services. Its search has historically relied on partner indexes, and a Goo-identified crawler may appear when fetching pages. This entry describes the documented pattern and is marked partially verified.
- Web crawlers overview
How WebmasterID separates regional search bots from SEO and AI crawlers.
Sources and verification notes
- Daum (Kakao) — portal / searchDaum operates a search crawler under Kakao; confirm current token and operator in its webmaster materials.
Last reviewed 2026-06-24. Facts are checked against primary/official sources where available; uncertain specifics are marked “Data not yet verified” rather than guessed.