What it does
Applebot is Apple's ai search crawler. An AI search index that can cite and link your pages in answers (ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Claude search, Alexa, Siri). Blocking removes you from those answer surfaces — for most sites these are wanted crawlers.
Powers Spotlight/Siri/Safari search. UA embeds 'Applebot/x.y' inside a full Safari-like string. WARNING for pattern-writers: 'Applebot' is a substring of 'Applebot-Extended' — order/anchor patterns accordingly.
Full UA: not captured in our July 2026 roster review — match log hits on the token Applebot (case-insensitive substring) and verify by IP before acting.
How to verify a hit is really Applebot
Verification method (July 2026): rDNS *.applebot.apple.com + published CIDR list: https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json
User-agent strings are freely spoofed, so a UA match alone proves nothing. Confirm the source IP belongs to Apple — published IP-range JSON where available, otherwise RDAP/rDNS on the IP. Full method: verify by IP.
Allow or block in robots.txt
Match the exact token Applebot in robots.txt:
# Block Applebot site-wide
User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /# Explicitly allow Applebot
User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /For the allow-search-block-training combined pattern (and the Allow-directive gotcha that silently kills carve-outs), see the robots.txt guide.
Vendor documentation: https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829
Frequently asked questions
What is Applebot?
Applebot is Apple's ai search crawler. An AI search index that can cite and link your pages in answers (ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Claude search, Alexa, Siri). Blocking removes you from those answer surfaces — for most sites these are wanted crawlers.
Does Applebot respect robots.txt?
Yes — Apple documents robots.txt compliance for Applebot (vendor docs reviewed July 2026).
How do I block Applebot?
Add 'User-agent: Applebot' followed by 'Disallow: /' to your robots.txt. Use the exact token — substring variants of other tokens will not match.