Amzn-SearchBot user agent
Operated by Amazon
Amzn-SearchBot is Amazon's crawler that improves search experiences in Amazon products such as Alexa.
The Amzn-SearchBot bot at a glance
- Amzn-SearchBot is operated by Amazon and indexes web pages so an AI search product can show and cite them in answers.
- The robots.txt token for Amzn-SearchBot is Amzn-SearchBot.
- Blocking an AI search crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- Amzn-SearchBot robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is Amzn-SearchBot?
Amzn-SearchBot makes a site’s content eligible to appear in Amazon search experiences such as Alexa. Amazon states it does not crawl content for generative AI model training.
If robots.txt does not name Amzn-SearchBot, Amazon says it follows the rules given to other search bots.
Should you block Amzn-SearchBot?
Allow Amzn-SearchBot unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking an AI search crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking removes your pages from that AI search index, so its answers can no longer cite or link to your website. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow Amzn-SearchBot
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 Amzn-SearchBot is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Amzn-SearchBot
User-agent: Amzn-SearchBot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Amzn-SearchBot
User-agent: Amzn-SearchBot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Amzn-SearchBot out of private areas only
User-agent: Amzn-SearchBot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Amzn-SearchBot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Amzn\-SearchBot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Amzn-SearchBot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Amzn\-SearchBot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Amzn-SearchBot")How to verify real Amzn-SearchBot traffic
Amazon publishes the IP ranges that Amzn-SearchBot uses. A request with the Amzn-SearchBot user agent from an IP outside that list is an impersonator.
How to find Amzn-SearchBot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Amzn-SearchBot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Amzn-SearchBot" 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.
Amzn-SearchBot user agent string
The full user agent Amazon publishes for Amzn-SearchBot. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Amzn-SearchBot/0.1) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36Amzn-SearchBot FAQ
Amzn-SearchBot identifies itself with the robots.txt token "Amzn-SearchBot". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Amzn-SearchBot/0.1) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36
Yes. Amazon states that Amzn-SearchBot follows robots.txt rules written for the "Amzn-SearchBot" token.
Blocking an AI search crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. Blocking removes your pages from that AI search index, so its answers can no longer cite or link to your website.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: Amzn-SearchBot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Yes. Amazon publishes the IP ranges Amzn-SearchBot uses. Check the request IP against that list; a matching user agent from any other IP is an impersonator.
Search your server access log for "Amzn-SearchBot", for example with: grep -i "Amzn-SearchBot" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Amazon 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.
