PetalBot user agent
Operated by Huawei
PetalBot is Huawei's crawler for Petal Search and Huawei's assistant and AI search services.
The PetalBot bot at a glance
- PetalBot is operated by Huawei and indexes web pages so an AI search product can show and cite them in answers, and crawls web pages for a search engine index.
- The robots.txt token for PetalBot is PetalBot.
- Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results.
- PetalBot robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is PetalBot?
PetalBot crawls pages for Petal Search, the default search engine on many Huawei devices.
Huawei states PetalBot follows robots.txt, and that blocking it removes pages from Petal Search.
Should you block PetalBot?
Allow PetalBot unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | AI features built on that search index, such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode on top of Googlebot, also lose access to your pages. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow PetalBot
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 PetalBot is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block PetalBot
User-agent: PetalBot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow PetalBot
User-agent: PetalBot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep PetalBot out of private areas only
User-agent: PetalBot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to PetalBot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(PetalBot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to PetalBot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (PetalBot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "PetalBot")How to verify real PetalBot traffic
Huawei publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for PetalBot, 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 PetalBot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts PetalBot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "PetalBot" 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.
PetalBot user agent string
The full user agent Huawei publishes for PetalBot. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible;PetalBot;+https://webmaster.petalsearch.com/site/petalbot)PetalBot FAQ
PetalBot identifies itself with the robots.txt token "PetalBot". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible;PetalBot;+https://webmaster.petalsearch.com/site/petalbot)
Yes. Huawei states that PetalBot follows robots.txt rules written for the "PetalBot" token.
Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results. AI features built on that search index, such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode on top of Googlebot, also lose access to your pages.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: PetalBot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Huawei publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for PetalBot, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "PetalBot", for example with: grep -i "PetalBot" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Huawei 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.
