Applebot — Apple's web crawler
Applebot is the web crawler operated by Apple, used to power features such as Siri and Spotlight Suggestions. It uses the Applebot robots.txt token and supports reverse-DNS verification. It is distinct from Applebot-Extended, a separate token governing use of crawled content for Apple's generative models.
What this means
Applebot is Apple's web crawler. Apple documents that Applebot powers features including Siri and Spotlight Suggestions by crawling public web content. Allowing Applebot lets Apple use your pages for those features.
Applebot is distinct from Applebot-Extended, a separate token Apple documents for controlling whether crawled content may be used to train Apple's generative models. Control the two tokens independently.
How to verify Applebot
Apple documents a reverse-DNS verification method: a genuine Applebot IP should resolve into an Apple domain, confirmed by a matching forward lookup. Verify rather than trusting the user agent, which is spoofable.
- robots.txt token: Applebot
- Separate token: Applebot-Extended (generative-model use)
- Verify via reverse DNS into an Apple domain
How it appears in analytics and logs
A request carrying the Applebot token is Apple's crawler fetching a URL to support features like Siri and Spotlight Suggestions — a bot event, not a human visit.
Diagnostic use case
Confirm Applebot crawl activity, verify suspect requests via reverse DNS, and control Applebot separately from Applebot-Extended.
What WebmasterID can help detect
WebmasterID classifies Applebot server-side as a search crawler and surfaces its activity separately from human traffic, so Apple crawl coverage is visible without log parsing.
Common mistakes
- Assuming one rule covers both Applebot and Applebot-Extended — they are separate tokens.
- Trusting an Applebot user agent without reverse-DNS verification.
- Counting crawler hits as human visits.
Privacy and accuracy notes
Identification uses the user agent plus Apple's reverse-DNS verification — no human identity. WebmasterID records Applebot as a bot event, separate from human analytics.
Related pages
- Bingbot — Microsoft Bing's web crawler
Bingbot is the crawler Microsoft Bing uses to discover and index web pages. It uses the bingbot robots.txt token and can be verified through Bing's reverse-DNS method and published IP ranges. Bing also powers results for other surfaces, so Bingbot coverage has reach beyond Bing.com.
- DuckDuckBot — DuckDuckGo's crawler
DuckDuckBot is the crawler operated by DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo also draws on third-party indexes for some results, so DuckDuckBot is one part of how its results are built. DuckDuckGo documents the crawler and publishes IP addresses operators can use to verify it.
- Bot intelligence
See search-engine crawlers separated from human traffic.
Sources and verification notes
- Apple — About ApplebotDocuments Applebot, Applebot-Extended, and reverse-DNS verification.
Last reviewed 2026-06-24. Facts are checked against primary/official sources where available; uncertain specifics are marked “Data not yet verified” rather than guessed.