QwenBot user agent
Operated by Alibaba
QwenBot is an Alibaba crawler reported as collecting public web content for the Qwen language models.
The QwenBot bot at a glance
- QwenBot is operated by Alibaba and collects public web pages that may be used to train AI models.
- The robots.txt token for QwenBot is QwenBot.
- Blocking an AI training crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- QwenBot robots.txt support: Not documented.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is QwenBot?
QwenBot is linked to Alibaba’s Qwen (Tongyi Qianwen) models.
Alibaba also operates TongyiBot for the Tongyi assistant.
Should you block QwenBot?
Blocking QwenBot 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 | Not documented |
| Recommendation | Your choice |
How to block or allow QwenBot
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 QwenBot is matched case-insensitively. robots.txt alone may not stop QwenBot, so add the Nginx, Apache or Cloudflare rule as well.
robots.txt: block
# Block QwenBot
User-agent: QwenBot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow QwenBot
User-agent: QwenBot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep QwenBot out of private areas only
User-agent: QwenBot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to QwenBot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(QwenBot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to QwenBot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (QwenBot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "QwenBot")How to verify real QwenBot traffic
Alibaba publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for QwenBot, 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 QwenBot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts QwenBot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "QwenBot" 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.
QwenBot FAQ
QwenBot uses the robots.txt token "QwenBot". Alibaba does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Alibaba has not documented how QwenBot treats robots.txt. Add a robots.txt rule and back it with a server rule if the traffic matters to you.
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: QwenBot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Alibaba publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for QwenBot, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "QwenBot", for example with: grep -i "QwenBot" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Public bot registry. 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.
