Applebot
Applebot is listed as a search crawler, and its operator is unclear in the community reference. In October 2026, 264 sites block it, a 4.3% share of readable files.
Who runs Applebot?
| Fact | Applebot reference entry |
|---|---|
| Operator | “Unclear at this time.” |
| Purpose | “AI Search Crawlers” |
| Does Applebot obey robots.txt? | “Yes” |
| Frequency | “Unclear at this time.” |
| Cloudflare managed list for Applebot | No |
These facts quote the stored community ai.robots.txt reference.
“Applebot is a web crawler used by Apple to index search results that allow the Siri AI Assistant to answer user questions. Siri's answers normally contain references to the website.”
The listed use here is search. Using a page as a search result can send people to it. Training models uses its contents for another purpose, which an owner may refuse.
How many sites block it?
A User-agent line names it in 276 files, 4.5% of 6,171 readable files. Whole-site bans, written Disallow: /, total 264, or 4.3%. That leaves 5,907 without a recorded ban.
Across Tranco’s top 1,000 ranks, there were 552 readable files. Among them, 41 files carry the name, or 7.4%, with 29 files blocking the whole site. Blocking is more common among the leading sites, at 5.3%. Farther down, 235 of 5,619 files record a block, 4.2% of that group.
| Readable files | Named by | Named share | Blocked by | Blocked share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Applebot, all ranks | 276 | 4.5% | 264 | 4.3% |
| Applebot, top 1,000 | 41 | 7.4% | 29 | 5.3% |
| Applebot, remaining ranks | 235 | 4.2% | 235 | 4.2% |
A general User-agent: * ban contributes to this total whenever it applies to this crawler. Of 264 blocks, 175 come only from that general rule, without naming this crawler. We found 89 files naming it and blocking the whole site, along with 187 files naming it without that ban. Another 5,895 files omit the name. We ignore capitalization and repeated names.
Has that changed since August?
Between August and October, 26 sites that had blocked it stopped and 21 started, so 5 fewer of the same 5,889 sites block it. A further 213 blocked it in both months, and 5,629 did so in neither. Keeping the sites the same lets us count changes in their rules.
August’s full sample had 262 blocks among 6,236 readable files. October’s was 264 among 6,171. Those monthly totals also reflect which files we could read on each visit.
| August to October | Files |
|---|---|
| Started blocking | 21 |
| Stopped blocking | 26 |
| Blocked in both | 213 |
| Blocked in neither | 5,629 |
| Net change | -5 |
How to block or allow it
These lines go in robots.txt at the root. User-agent: * yields to a group naming Applebot under the robots.txt standard.
Block the whole site
User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /Allow access
User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /It's the 32nd most-named crawler of the 171 we counted in the crawler index.
How we counted
For Applebot, we surveyed Tranco’s top 10,000 sites on 19 October 2026. Requests could run for 8 seconds, with a 262,144-byte file limit. Shares exclude unreachable, unavailable and oversized files. Repeat readings are included, using scripts/robots_2026_08_06.py (robots.py at app commit 07104ff). See the full survey method.
Common questions
Does a User-agent line mean it is blocked?
The 276 files naming it include 187 files without a whole-site ban.
What do the top-ranked sites show?
For naming rules, 7.4% of the leading sample mentions it, compared with 4.5% overall. Whole-site blocking is 5.3% at leading ranks and 4.3% across the full sample.
Which nearby entry can I compare?
For comparison, Google-CloudVertexBot has 275 files naming it and 462 blocks, or 7.5%. Our counts for this entry are 276 files with the name and 264 blocking the whole site, or 4.3%.