Applebot: Apple's Search Crawler
What is Applebot?
Applebot indexes content for Siri, Spotlight and Safari Suggestions. Applebot is separate from Applebot-Extended, and a request claiming to be Applebot is confirmed by reverse DNS against applebot.apple.com, never by the user agent alone.
Key facts
- Applebot is operated by Apple, and its purpose is search index: builds the index an AI product cites from.
- Apple publishes no full user-agent string for Applebot, so Kymo matches the token Applebot observed in real logs.
- The robots.txt token for Applebot is Applebot, and Apple documents that Applebot respects that rule.
- Applebot can send a visitor to your site, and Applebot attaches a linked citation when it uses your content.
Specification
| Operator | Apple |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Search indexBuilds the index an AI product cites from. Blocking it removes you from that product's answers. This is the expensive block, and the one most often made by accident. |
| Agent kind | CrawlerAutonomous crawler. Appears in your logs under its own user-agent. |
| User agent | Not documented by Apple. Kymo matches this agent on the token Applebot, observed in real logs rather than published in operator documentation. |
| robots.txt token | Applebot |
| robots.txt compliance | Documented: respects robots.txt |
| Verification | Reverse DNS, forward confirmed.applebot.apple.com |
| Sends referral traffic | Yes |
| Attaches a citation | Yes |
| Status | Active |
| Legacy Kymo category | indexing |
| Source | Operator documentationhttps://support.apple.com/en-us/119829 |
| Verified on |
What this looks like in your logs
grep -i 'Applebot' access.log
Apple publishes no full user-agent string for Applebot, so the rest of the line varies and only the token Applebot is dependable. Kymo matches on that token, case-insensitively, for the same reason.
What Applebot does not do
Applebot does not guarantee a visit, because a read only becomes a visit if a person clicks the citation that came out of it.
Applebot does not train a model on what it reads, so blocking it changes what Apple can answer and not what Apple learns.
Apple publishes no crawl frequency for Applebot, so any schedule you read elsewhere is somebody's estimate rather than a documented figure.
How Kymo classifies it
Kymo files Applebot under Apple as indexing, classified from the HTTP request on the server rather than from anything running in a browser.
A hit from Applebot appears on the Crawlers dashboard and is deliberately left out of the AI Visibility numbers. An index sweep produces no click to miss, so counting it there would inflate the read number and break its relationship to the visitor number beside it.
Seen on our own sites
| Last seen | 15 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|
| Days active, last 30 days | 31 |
| Requests, last 30 days | 9,107 |
Counted by Kymo on kymo.in and remotestack.in, the two sites we run, up to 15 Sep 2026. Two sites is a small sample. Treat these numbers as proof the bot is active now.
Allow it or block it
Blocking Applebot removes you from Siri, Spotlight and Safari Suggestions. Matching note: the token Applebot is a substring of Applebot-Extended, so a naive substring match will produce false positives. Match longest token first.
| Allow it if | Block it if |
|---|---|
| You want to appear in Apple answers, because this crawler builds the index those answers cite. | You accept disappearing from Apple answers. This is the most expensive block on this page, and it is the one made most often by accident. |
robots.txt directives
Both blocks below address Applebot only. Rules for one token never apply to another, even from the same operator.
Allow Applebot
User-agent: Applebot Allow: /
Block Applebot
User-agent: Applebot Disallow: /
Questions
How do I know a request claiming to be Applebot is genuine?
Run a reverse DNS lookup on the requesting address, confirm it ends in .applebot.apple.com, then run a forward lookup on that name and check it returns the same address. A user-agent string alone proves nothing.
Does blocking Applebot also block Applebot-Extended?
No. Applebot and Applebot-Extended are separate tokens, and Apple treats each one on its own. Applebot-Extended has no user agent and cannot be blocked, so it has to be set as its own robots.txt rule.
Will I see Applebot in Google Analytics?
No. Google Analytics runs a JavaScript tag in a visitor's browser, and Applebot reads your HTML and leaves without running any script. Server-side logging is the only way to record it.
Does Applebot send traffic back to my site?
Yes. Applebot builds an index that Apple cites its sources from, and a citation there is a link a person can click. A crawl is still not a visit, so expect the read count to run far ahead of the click count.
Related crawlers
All AI crawlers and control tokens
See this bot in your own logs
Applebot decides whether you appear in Apple answers, and a browser tag cannot tell you whether it ever came.
Kymo reads the HTTP request on your server, so a crawler that never runs JavaScript is still recorded. You see which bots reached the site, which pages they took and how often, next to your human traffic.
Start free → 14-day free trial. No card required.
No account yet? Run a free AI visibility check on your own site.