Apple
AI search
Applebot
Crawls pages for search in Spotlight, Siri and Safari; Apple may also use what it collects to train its foundation models.
Follows robots.txt- User agent token
- Applebot
- Operator
- Apple
- Verification
- Published IP list , reverse DNS applebot.apple.com
- Source
- Apple documentation
What an AI search crawler does
An AI search crawler builds the index an assistant searches before it answers. Being in that index is how a page gets quoted and linked in AI answers, which is a growing source of visitors.
Block or allow Applebot in robots.txt
Add one of these to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain. Crawlers read it before they fetch anything else.
Block Applebot
User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /Allow Applebot
User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /More from Apple
Questions, answered.
Applebot is an AI search crawler run by Apple. Crawls pages for search in Spotlight, Siri and Safari; Apple may also use what it collects to train its foundation models.
Yes. Apple says Applebot follows robots.txt.
Add "User-agent: Applebot" and "Disallow: /" to your robots.txt.
Check the request's IP address against the list Apple publishes. A user agent alone proves nothing, since any script can copy it.
It can. Pages Applebot indexes may be cited and linked in Apple's AI answers, and those links bring readers.
Only if you don't want to appear in Apple's AI answers. Blocking Applebot removes your pages from what it can cite.
In its own documentation at https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829. Every fact on this page comes from there.
Still have questions? We're happy to help.
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