What is Skype?
Direct Answer: Skype's URI Preview services fetches a page preview when someone posts a URL in a Skype message.
Skype's URI Preview services is a bot that fetches a page preview when a URL is posted in a Skype message. It is operated by Skype and uses a specific user-agent string.
User-Agent Identification
The following user-agent strings identify Skype in your live traffic data:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) SkypeUriPreview Preview/0.5
robots.txt Rules for Skype
Respects robots.txt: No
Robots.txt has limited effect on user-initiated bots
Skype is triggered by user actions within Skype's products. While Skype states it respects robots.txt, the bot operates differently from autonomous crawlers — it fetches specific URLs on demand rather than systematically spidering your site. Server-log monitoring is the only reliable way to verify what actually happens.
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Crawl Behavior
Frequency:On-Demand
Request Pattern:Fetches Page Preview When A URL Is Posted In A Skype Message
Crawl Activity Index
Relative crawl activity for Skype over the past 28 days. Higher values indicate increased crawling intensity compared to the period baseline.
View recent activity data (last 7 days)
| Date | Activity Index |
|---|---|
| Mar 26, 2026 | 88.0 |
| Mar 27, 2026 | 82.7 |
| Mar 28, 2026 | 83.1 |
| Mar 29, 2026 | 81.8 |
| Mar 30, 2026 | 87.3 |
| Mar 31, 2026 | 90.2 |
| Apr 1, 2026 | 88.8 |
Source: Cloudflare Radar
Why track Skype traffic?
Ensure your link previews render correctly. Skype fetches your pages to generate link preview cards on Skype. If it can't access your meta tags, your shared links display broken or generic previews.
Monitor social sharing activity. Skype requests correlate with how often your URLs are being shared on Skype, even before engagement metrics are available.
Log Verification
To verify Skype traffic in your live traffic data:
- Search access logs for the user-agent strings listed above
- Check if the IP addresses match documented ranges (if provided by Skype)
- Verify the crawl pattern matches documented behavior
- Use reverse DNS lookup for additional verification if available
Note: Observed behavior in production environments may differ from official documentation. Live traffic monitoring provides the only reliable verification of actual bot behavior.
Undocumented Information
The following information is not officially documented for Skype:
- crawl frequency details
- IP verification
- JavaScript rendering details
Verify your link previews work — and track social bot access
- Confirm Skype can access your Open Graph meta tags
- Track which URLs are being shared on Skype
- Detect failed fetches causing broken preview cards
Official Documentation
View Official Skype Documentation →
Information sourced from official documentation. Content generated with AI assistance.