Overview
Applebot is a search crawler from Apple used for search indexing, URL discovery, page rendering, result freshness, and search-quality checks.
Its primary user-agent pattern is Applebot; related patterns include Apple search crawler; a representative HTTP user-agent is Mozilla/5.0 (Device; OS_version) AppleWebKit/WebKit_version (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/Safari_version [Mobile/Mobile_version] Safari/WebKit_version (Applebot/Applebot_version; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot).
Applebot is verified with High confidence. The identity type is Official Documented, and the evidence basis is official operator documentation.
Applebot is marked as respecting robots.txt directives for crawler access control.
Applebot can usually be allowed after confirming the source and monitoring request volume.
Identity
- User-Agent Pattern
-
Applebot - Aliases
- Apple search crawler
- HTTP Agent Examples
-
Mozilla/5.0 (Device; OS_version) AppleWebKit/WebKit_version (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/Safari_version [Mobile/Mobile_version] Safari/WebKit_version (Applebot/Applebot_version; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot) - Robots Token
- Applebot
- Identity Type
- Officially documented
- Evidence Method
- Verify Applebot by matching `Applebot` to Apple evidence, then checking reverse DNS, source-network ownership, signed request data, or published crawler documentation when available.
Classification
- Type
- Search
- Kind
- Crawler
- Family
- Apple
- Purpose
- Indexing
Behavior and handling
- Common Use
- Powering Apple search experiences including Spotlight, Siri, and Safari; crawled data may also be used to help train Apple foundation models unless publishers opt out with Applebot-Extended.
- Detection Notes
- Applebot traffic is primarily detected by the `Applebot` user-agent pattern; related patterns include `Apple search crawler`; a representative HTTP user-agent is `Mozilla/5.0 (Device; OS_version) AppleWebKit/WebKit_version (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/Safari_version [Mobile/Mobile_version] Safari/WebKit_version (Applebot/Applebot_version; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot)`. Compare source IPs, reverse DNS, request paths, and crawl cadence with Apple infrastructure before trusting the traffic.
- Respects robots.txt
- Yes
- Spoofing Risk
- Applebot has medium spoofing risk because the user-agent can be copied, even when the bot has strong source or documentation support.
- Risk
- Safe
- Recommended Handling
- Depends
Rules and controls
- Robots.txt Snippet
-
User-agent: Applebot Disallow: /
Relationships
- Operator
- Apple Checked 2026-08-07
Relationships without an Evidence link are normalized from the canonical directory record. They should not be interpreted as independent proof of physical presence or request origin.