AI crawlers · Search indexes
Applebot
Applebot is the search index crawler run by Apple: Apple / Siri. Its operator publishes the IP ranges it crawls from (https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json), so a request carrying the name can be checked against that list.
| User-agent token | Applebot |
| Operator | Apple |
| What it does | Apple / Siri |
| Kind | search index crawler |
| Can a request be verified? | Yes — published ip feed |
| Verification source | https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json |
| In a CrawlCheck scan | Sent as a request on every scan; a refusal is scored |
Allow or block it in robots.txt
User-agent: Applebot Disallow: /
User-agent: Applebot Allow: /
Add a group that names it: "User-agent: Applebot" followed by "Disallow: /". A crawler follows only the most specific group that names it, so once a group names Applebot, rules under "User-agent: *" no longer apply to it; repeat in that group any Disallow lines you still want.
What blocking it changes
Indirectly. It feeds Apple / Siri. A refusal removes pages from that index, and most AI answer surfaces still draw on search indexes.
What it actually did on crawlcheck.io
| Verified requests | 6,185 |
| Requests using its name from outside its operator's ranges | 84 (1.3% of claims) |
| robots.txt fetched | 62 times |
| Fetches of paths robots.txt disallows | 16 |
| Observed | 2026-08-13 to 2026-10-30 |
Measured on this site’s own traffic, verified against the operator’s published ranges. Every agent’s record: agent conduct.
Other agents from Apple
Applebot-Extended— Apple trainingApplebot-Extended-Ads— Apple ads corpus
See what Applebot and every other named agent receive from your own site: run a free scan. The full catalogue is on AI crawlers and as JSON at /ai-crawlers.json.