AI crawler reference
Applebot-Extended: training opt-out only
Applebot-Extended lets publishers opt out of their content being used to train Apple's general-purpose foundation models. Apple states that pages disallowing it can still appear in search results and remain discoverable through Spotlight, Siri and Safari.
The facts
Taken from Apple's own documentation.
- robots.txt token
- Applebot-Extended
- Operator
- Apple
- What it feeds
- Model training
- Obeys robots.txt
- Yes. It exists only as a robots.txt control.
What each choice costs
Neither option is free. This is the trade.
If you allow it
Your content may be used to train Apple's general-purpose foundation models.
User-agent: Applebot-Extended Allow: /
If you block it
You opt out of that training. Apple confirms your content stays discoverable through Spotlight, Siri and Safari.
User-agent: Applebot-Extended Disallow: /
Deciding this alongside the other bots is easier in one place: build the whole file.
Worth knowing
- This is the cleanest training opt-out available. Apple states outright that search discoverability is unaffected.
- Like Google-Extended, it is a control token rather than a bot that fetches under that name.
- Blocking Applebot instead, by mistake, costs you Apple's search surfaces entirely.
Verify it
A user-agent header proves nothing on its own, because anything can send one. Apple publishes no IP list for this agent, so a request carrying this name cannot be confirmed as genuine.
Questions
Will blocking it hurt Siri or Spotlight?
No. Apple states that pages disallowing Applebot-Extended can still be included in search results and remain discoverable through Spotlight, Siri and Safari.
How is it different from Applebot?
Applebot is the search crawler. Applebot-Extended only governs whether crawled data may be used to train Apple's foundation models.
Is there a downside to blocking it?
Your brand is less represented in what Apple's models learn, which is the same trade as any training opt-out.
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