Apple

Applebot

Powers Spotlight, Siri and Safari, and may supply context for Apple's generative AI features.

Class: Search index
robots.txt: Says it honours robots.txt; Follows your Googlebot rules if not named. Ignores Crawl-delay.
Evidence: Confirmed from operator documentation; Source

Proving it is real

Check the IP against Apple's Applebot file.
Run a reverse DNS lookup, confirm the name ends in .applebot.apple.com, then confirm it resolves back to the same IP.

robots.txt

User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /

Cloudflare custom rule expression

(http.user_agent contains "Applebot")

nginx

if ($http_user_agent ~* "Applebot") {
    return 403;
}

Matching a name only blocks bots that tell the truth about it. Before you do this, read what each decision costs.

Last reviewed Nov 2, 2026