What is Applebot? Apple's search crawler
Applebot is Apple's web crawler. Apple says its data supports search in Spotlight, Siri and Safari, and may also help train Apple's generative AI models.
45 of the 1662 major websites we measure block Applebot in robots.txt (3%). 109 of those sites name it directly in their robots.txt; the rest are covered by a wildcard rule.
Key facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Operator | Apple |
| Used for | Spotlight, Siri and Safari search |
| Type | Search engine. Builds a search engine's index. Listed here because people look it up beside AI crawlers. It isn't counted in the AI crawler figures. |
| robots.txt token | Applebot |
| Operator's documentation | Read it here |
What blocking Applebot does
Apple says Applebot follows robots.txt rules written for it and ignores Crawl-delay, and that when a file does not mention Applebot but does mention Googlebot, Applebot follows the Googlebot rules. The figures below apply that rule. Use in Apple's model training is governed separately by Applebot-Extended.
How to allow or block Applebot
Add one of these groups to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain. It is a stated preference that well-behaved crawlers read, not an enforcement mechanism.
User-agent: Applebot Disallow: /
User-agent: Applebot Allow: /
Applebot user agent string
Apple documents this text as appearing within the user agent: Applebot/.
How to verify a request is really Applebot
Anyone can put a crawler's name in a user agent string, so the name alone proves nothing. Apple says to check that the reverse DNS name ends in applebot.apple.com, or to match the address against the ranges it publishes at search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json.
How to whitelist Applebot in a firewall or CDN
robots.txt only states a preference. A firewall, CDN or bot protection service can still refuse the request, and the crawler then gets an error even though robots.txt allows it.
- Check that no group in your robots.txt blocks it, using the rule above.
- Add an allow rule in your firewall or CDN that matches the name in the user agent. Keep the rule narrow, because anyone can copy a name.
- Check your server logs for a 200 response from Applebot afterwards.
On Cloudflare, also check AI Crawler and Agent access policies, which can block search, agent and training traffic across a site.
Why Applebot gets a 403 or 405 error
A 403 means the server refused the request, which usually points to a firewall or bot rule. A 405 means the server refused the request's method, so check any rule that only permits certain methods. A crawler that obeys robots.txt won't request a page it is told to avoid, so an error in your logs points to your server's configuration. To stop it deliberately at the server, this nginx rule returns a 403:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Applebot") {
return 403;
}Who blocks Applebot, by sector
| Sector | Sites measured | Blocking | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technology media | 126 | 20 | 16% |
| News publishers | 182 | 13 | 7% |
| Health publishers | 88 | 3 | 3% |
| Reference and research | 114 | 3 | 3% |
| Finance and business media | 94 | 2 | 2% |
| AI companies | 128 | 1 | 1% |
| SaaS platforms | 196 | 1 | 1% |
| SEO and marketing tools | 86 | 1 | 1% |
| Social and media platforms | 115 | 1 | 1% |
| Developer references | 159 | 0 | 0% |
| E-commerce and retail | 92 | 0 | 0% |
| Government and institutions | 98 | 0 | 0% |
| Hosting and infrastructure | 98 | 0 | 0% |
| Travel | 86 | 0 | 0% |
Sites blocking Applebot
afterpay.com, androidcentral.com, azcentral.com, babycenter.com, biorxiv.org, breakingnews.ie, corriere.it, distill.pub, dw.com, eurogamer.net, everydayhealth.com, extremetech.com, gamesindustry.biz, heise.de, ign.com, ilsole24ore.com, imore.com, itpro.com, kiplinger.com, laptopmag.com, lastampa.it, lesechos.fr, lifehacker.com, livescience.com, magento.com, mashable.com, pcgamer.com, pcmag.com, publico.pt, reddit.com, repubblica.it, rockpapershotgun.com, snopes.com, stuff.co.nz, t3.com, techradar.com, todayonline.com, tomsguide.com, tomshardware.com, usatoday.com, volkskrant.nl, webmasterworld.com, whathifi.com, whattoexpect.com, windowscentral.com.
Sites that allow Applebot by name
abcnews.go.com, academia.edu, alaskaair.com, apollo.io, arm.com, arxiv.org, barrons.com, bedbathandbeyond.com, bestbuy.com, booking.com, clickfunnels.com, dashlane.com, deeplearning.ai, deezer.com, devclass.com, dictionary.cambridge.org, digitaltrends.com, discogs.com, disneyplus.com, eluniversal.com.mx, enterprise.com, facebook.com, fentybeauty.com, flickr.com, flightaware.com, gainsight.com, gamma.app, geeksforgeeks.org, getyourguide.com, golem.de, hackernoon.com, heygen.com, imdb.com, instacart.com, instagram.com, kajabi.com, linguee.com, lobste.rs, marketwatch.com, mediamarkt.de, and 29 more in the full dataset.
Other Apple crawlers
Applebot-Extended (Apple Intelligence control).
See all 36 AI crawlers, the rule change log or the full study. Being reachable is only the first step: how AI search engines choose what to cite covers the rest.
Cite this data
You are welcome to quote or republish these figures. Please credit IndexHalo with a link to this page (CC BY 4.0). All our datasets are on the data page.
IndexHalo. "Applebot block rate across major websites." Measured 12 November 2026. https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/applebot/
<a href="https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/applebot/">Applebot block rate across major websites, IndexHalo</a>