Applebot
Apple's search engine.
- Operator
- Apple
- Type
- Search engine
- In the user agent
Applebot- robots.txt token
Applebot- Follows robots.txt
- says it follows robots.txt
- Official documentation
- support.apple.com
- Checked on
- 2026-11-04
What is Applebot?
Applebot is Apple's search engine. It indexes pages for a search engine, whose results also feed AI answers.
The operator's description: Apple's crawler for Siri, Spotlight and Safari search features.
(support.apple.com)
How do I block or allow Applebot?
With robots.txt, using the token Applebot. Apple says it follows robots.txt. To block the whole site:
User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /To allow it, use Allow instead of Disallow. Before blocking, weigh what it brings: without it, the assistant cannot find your pages to cite or recommend them.
How do I see whether Applebot visits my site?
In your server or CDN access logs, look for Applebot in the user agent. Google Analytics does not show these visits: agents do not run its JavaScript.
Anyone can copy the name in a user agent, so counting log lines is not enough. Knocklog reads your site's traffic on any host, confirms who is who, and shows how often Applebot came, which pages it read and what that brought you.
How do I know it is really Applebot?
Apple publishes Applebot's IP addresses at https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json. A visit that claims to be Applebot from outside those ranges is spoofed.
The IP's reverse DNS, confirmed forward and back, must end in .applebot.apple.com.
Knocklog runs this check on every visit and separates the genuine agent from impostors.
Does Applebot visit your site?
See in seconds how your site treats AI agents. Then connect your traffic to learn who really came.
Other Apple agents
- Applebot-Extended AI training crawler