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Search crawler

What is Applebot?

Applebot is Apple's crawler for search features in Spotlight, Siri and Safari.

Classic searchFollows robots.txtIP list
Operator
Apple
Purpose
Classic search. Search engines. Blocking them removes you from search results.
robots.txt token
Applebot
Sample user agent
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.4 Safari/605.1.15 (Applebot/0.1; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot)User agents change with versions. Match on the token, not the full string.
Follows robots.txt
Yes, according to Apple. Apple says it follows your Googlebot rules when Applebot is not named, and does not support Crawl-delay.
How to verify
Check the IP against Apple's published list.Reverse DNS on applebot.apple.com, confirmed with a forward lookup.
Sources
Apple documentationApple IP list
Last reviewed

Allow or block Applebot

Blocking Applebot removes your pages from Apple search results, so we don't offer that snippet. If you need to, write the rule by hand.

Allow Applebot
User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /

Lets Applebot crawl everything. You only need this if a broader rule would otherwise block it.

Should you block it?

Keep Applebot allowed. Blocking it removes your pages from Apple search results.

Write a full policy with the AI Crawler Policy Generator

How to verify a Applebot request

  1. Find the IP address of the request in your server or CDN logs.
  2. Get Apple's published list (Apple IP list).
  3. Check whether the IP falls inside one of the ranges. If it doesn't, the request is not from Applebot, whatever its user agent says.

Or with reverse DNS

  1. Run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP (host 192.0.2.1, with the IP from your log).
  2. Check the hostname ends in applebot.apple.com.
  3. Run a forward lookup on that hostname and check it returns the same IP. Both steps must pass.
Test Applebot requests

Questions about Applebot

Is Applebot safe to allow?

Applebot reads public pages; it does not log in or submit forms. Whether to allow it depends on whether you want Apple's product to use your pages.

How do I know a request is really Applebot?

Check the request against what Apple publishes: Check the IP against Apple's published list. Reverse DNS on applebot.apple.com, confirmed with a forward lookup. The user agent alone proves nothing.

How often does Applebot visit?

It depends on your site; Apple doesn't publish a schedule. Referscope shows the real visits.

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