Applebot

Applebot crawls pages to build the search index an AI platform answers from. Most operators use a separate user agent for each job, so you can usually allow or block one without affecting the others.

Crawlers that build search indexes used by AI platforms. Access supports discovery but does not guarantee a listing or citation.

Requests from Applebot carry this token in their user agent string. Match the token rather than a full string, which changes as Apple updates versions.

To block Applebot, add this to the robots.txt at the root of your site:

Blocking it keeps your pages out of that index, so the platform has less of your content to find and cite. Allowing it makes your pages eligible, not guaranteed, to appear in answers.

To allow it explicitly, for example after a broader rule blocks other crawlers:

Check what your robots.txt allows for Applebot and the other AI crawlers in this directory.

Apple publishes the IP addresses Applebot uses. A request that claims to be Applebot from any other address is not genuine.

• search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json

SurfacedBy's AI traffic tracking recognizes Applebot in the user agent and checks each request against Apple's published addresses. Only requests that pass count as crawls; the rest are shown separately.

Details on this page come from Apple's own documentation: support.apple.com/en-us/119829.

• Applebot-Extendedrobots.txt control