Applebot-Extended user agent
Operated by Apple
Applebot-Extended is a robots.txt token that lets sites opt out of their content being used to train Apple's foundation models.
The Applebot-Extended bot at a glance
- Applebot-Extended is operated by Apple and collects public web pages that may be used to train AI models.
- The robots.txt token for Applebot-Extended is Applebot-Extended.
- Blocking an AI training crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- Applebot-Extended robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is Applebot-Extended?
Applebot-Extended does not crawl pages itself. Apple reads the Applebot-Extended rule to decide whether data Applebot already collected may train Apple Intelligence models.
Blocking Applebot-Extended keeps pages in Siri, Spotlight and Safari search results.
Should you block Applebot-Extended?
Blocking Applebot-Extended is a business decision: it protects your content but can lower how well AI products know your brand.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking an AI training crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking keeps your future pages out of that company's training data, so its models may know less about your brand over time. It does not remove you from that company's AI search, which uses a separate bot. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Your choice |
How to block or allow Applebot-Extended
Put the robots.txt rule in the file at the root of every domain and subdomain, for example https://example.com/robots.txt. The token Applebot-Extended is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Applebot-Extended
User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Applebot-Extended
User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Applebot-Extended out of private areas only
User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Applebot-Extended
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Applebot\-Extended)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Applebot-Extended
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Applebot\-Extended) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Applebot-Extended")How to verify real Applebot-Extended traffic
Apple publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Applebot-Extended, so the user agent cannot be verified. Anyone can send the same string. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
How to find Applebot-Extended in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Applebot-Extended requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Applebot-Extended" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.
Applebot-Extended FAQ
Applebot-Extended uses the robots.txt token "Applebot-Extended". Apple does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. Apple states that Applebot-Extended follows robots.txt rules written for the "Applebot-Extended" token.
Blocking an AI training crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. Blocking keeps your future pages out of that company's training data, so its models may know less about your brand over time. It does not remove you from that company's AI search, which uses a separate bot.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: Applebot-Extended" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Apple publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Applebot-Extended, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "Applebot-Extended", for example with: grep -i "Applebot-Extended" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Apple crawler documentation. Last reviewed by Justin Hà.
See which of these bots actually reach your website
The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers in your server log, for free. The GEO Technical Package sets up robots.txt, llms.txt and crawler access for AI search.
