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Applebot-Extended

A control token, not a crawler. It decides whether Apple may use what Applebot crawled to train its generative models.

Check if your site lets Applebot-Extended in Run the full AI Visibility Check

Last verified: October 2026, against Apple's own documentation.

Applebot-Extended at a glance.

Owner
Apple
Purpose
Training. Apple says Applebot-Extended doesn't crawl webpages. It's only used to decide how Apple may use data crawled by Applebot, and publishers can use it to opt out of training Apple's generative foundation models.
robots.txt token
Applebot-Extended
Full user agent
Not published.

You won't see Applebot-Extended in your logs because it doesn't crawl. The fetches come from Applebot, whose user agent includes "Applebot" and a link to apple.com/go/applebot.

IP ranges
search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json

This is Applebot's list. Apple also says Applebot traffic resolves to hostnames under applebot.apple.com.

Respects robots.txt?
robots.txt token only. It only exists in robots.txt. Apple says Applebot respects standard robots.txt directives but doesn't follow Crawl-delay, and that if your file doesn't mention Applebot but does mention Googlebot, Applebot follows the Googlebot rules.

The robots.txt rules to copy.

Your robots.txt lives at the root of your domain, like yoursite.com/robots.txt. On Shopify you edit it by adding a robots.txt.liquid template to your theme. Shopify warns that a wrong edit can cost you all your traffic, so change one rule at a time.

Allow Applebot-Extended

User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Allow: /

A bot with no rule is already allowed. Add this only when a broader rule, such as User-agent: * with Disallow: /, would otherwise block it.

Block Applebot-Extended

User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Disallow: /

Robots.txt rules apply per host. Repeat them on each subdomain you want covered.

Should you block Applebot-Extended on a local business site or a Shopify store?

Apple says pages that disallow Applebot-Extended can still appear in search results, stay discoverable through Spotlight, Siri and Safari, and that the rule isn't considered in ranking.

Blocking it costs nothing in Apple search. Watch the Googlebot fallback, though: a rule written for Googlebot can end up applying to Applebot too.

A rule you didn't write can block it too: an old robots.txt template, a security plugin or a CDN bot setting. The AI crawler checker reads your robots.txt for Applebot-Extended and the other bots in this directory.

The 12 bots, sorted by job

  1. Search and answers

    3 bots

    They build the index an AI assistant searches when it answers.

    If you block themPer their owners, blocking one can drop you from that assistant's search answers.

  2. Fetching a page when a user asks

    3 bots

    They fetch your page because a person asked the assistant about it.

    If you block themBlocked at your firewall, the assistant can't read your page for the person who asked. Two of the three may not follow a robots.txt block.

  3. Applebot-Extended is in this group

    Model training

    6 bots

    A block here tells the owner to keep your pages out of AI model training. CCBot is here because its open archive can be used that way.

    If you block themFor most, the owner says blocking doesn't remove you from its search features. Meta says its crawler also indexes content for its products.

Where Applebot-Extended sits among the 12 AI bots in this directory, grouped by what each one does, with what blocking each group costs you.

Related crawlers.

Sources

Last verified: October 2026. Where the owner doesn't document something, this page says so instead of guessing.

  1. Apple Support, About Applebot

Crawler access is the first thing I check in an AI answer audit. Most of what decides who gets named is what other sites say about you.

Check your robots.txt Or run the full AI Visibility Check