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Skype

Skype's URI Preview services fetches a page preview when someone posts a URL in a Skype message.
SkypeSkypeUriPreview
Preview

What is Skype?

SkypeUriPreview fetches a web page after someone posts its URL in a Skype message. Skype uses the response to prepare a page preview for that conversation.

The request is made by Skype's preview service rather than the recipient's browser. It shows that the URL was submitted in a message, but it does not show that either participant clicked through or read the destination. The record does not specify which page fields Skype extracts, so claims about a required metadata format would go beyond the available evidence.

This is an on-demand messaging feature, not a crawler for continuous site discovery. No AI search, citation, or model-training purpose is documented. Allowing it can affect the preview shown in Skype, while blocking it has no established effect on search ranking or AI visibility.

The stable token is SkypeUriPreview. Cloudflare's bot directory records the fuller header as Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) SkypeUriPreview Preview/0.5 and says the bot does not follow robots.txt. This entry provides no verified address range or signature method.

Indirectly relevant

Is Skype relevant for AI search?

Indirectly. Skype has no AI product of its own, but its output can end up in the systems that AI answers draw on.

Skype fetches pages to build link-preview cards. It does not feed an AI index, but it reads the same Open Graph and structured metadata that AI systems parse to understand your pages, so clean preview metadata doubles as AI-friendly metadata.

How to handle Skype

Leave public pages reachable if Skype users should receive a preview when they paste those URLs into messages. Authentication, signed URLs, and normal authorization should continue to protect private destinations.

You can state a crawl preference for the stable token:

User-agent: SkypeUriPreview
Disallow: /

Robots compliance is unknown in the bot metadata, and Cloudflare's bot directory marks it as false. Use an edge or application rule for a required block. Do not allowlist the request solely because its header contains SkypeUriPreview.

Examples

  • A Skype user pastes a public conference page into a message, and SkypeUriPreview fetches it before displaying a summary in the conversation.
  • An analytics team records the request as preview traffic rather than counting it as a click from the message recipient.
  • A link to an authenticated support ticket returns `401`, so Skype cannot build a public preview and the ticket remains protected.

Frequently asked questions about Skype

Learn about AI visibility monitoring and how Promptwatch helps your brand succeed in AI search.

Skype's URI Preview service fetches a page when someone posts that page's URL in a Skype message.

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