amazon-kendra user agent
Operated by Amazon
amazon-kendra is the web crawler of Amazon Kendra, an AWS enterprise search service that AWS customers point at websites.
The amazon-kendra bot at a glance
- amazon-kendra is operated by Amazon and indexes web pages so an AI search product can show and cite them in answers, and fetches pages to power a specific product feature.
- The robots.txt token for amazon-kendra is amazon-kendra.
- Blocking an AI search crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- amazon-kendra robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is amazon-kendra?
Amazon Kendra crawls the sites an AWS customer configures, to power that customer’s own search and AI answers.
AWS documents the web crawler connector and its robots.txt handling.
Should you block amazon-kendra?
Blocking amazon-kendra 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 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 | Your choice |
How to block or allow amazon-kendra
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 amazon-kendra is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block amazon-kendra
User-agent: amazon-kendra
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow amazon-kendra
User-agent: amazon-kendra
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep amazon-kendra out of private areas only
User-agent: amazon-kendra
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to amazon-kendra
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(amazon\-kendra)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to amazon-kendra
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (amazon\-kendra) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "amazon-kendra")How to verify real amazon-kendra traffic
Amazon publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for amazon-kendra, 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 amazon-kendra in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts amazon-kendra requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "amazon-kendra" 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.
amazon-kendra FAQ
amazon-kendra uses the robots.txt token "amazon-kendra". Amazon does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. Amazon states that amazon-kendra follows robots.txt rules written for the "amazon-kendra" 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: amazon-kendra" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Amazon publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for amazon-kendra, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "amazon-kendra", for example with: grep -i "amazon-kendra" 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.
