Every AI bot · Apple

Applebot

Apple's crawler that builds an index for AI search answers.

In robots.txt: User-agent: Applebot

Named by6.3%of readable robots.txt files on the top 1M (37,767 of 600,979)

Of those, block it11.3%shut it out of the whole site (4,254 of 37,767)

Same sites, since CC-MAIN-2026-34+0.0 ptsshare of the same 394,690 sites that block it by name: 0.7% → 0.7%

Via Cloudflare's file3.7%of its blocks come from Cloudflare's ready-made robots.txt (157 of 4,254)

11.3%

13.6%

75.1%

Block the whole site: 4,254Block some paths: 5,150Name it but allow it: 28,363

Every robots.txt file on the top 1M that names Applebot, by what the rules that apply to it say.

Apple's other bots

Sites often treat one company's bots differently, depending on what each is for.

Bot	Purpose	Files naming it	Of those, block it
Applebot-Extended	Collects pages to train AI	52,680	80.3%

Who does what

The highest-ranked sites on the top million in each group. Click one to see its whole robots.txt verdict.

Block it

Block some paths

Name it and allow it

Lists skip sites we don't showcase (adult content).

What this means for you: blocking Applebot can keep your pages out of Apple's AI search answers, including any links back to you. Decide each bot on what it's for, not who runs it.