Applebot-Extended
Does not crawl. It decides whether pages Applebot already fetched may train Apple's generative models. Blocking it keeps a site out of that training and, Apple says, has no effect on search ranking or on appearing in Siri, Spotlight and Safari.
Where this comes from
- Documented by the vendor. Source: support.apple.com
- Honours robots.txt.
- Listed, not scored. It cannot keep a site out of today's answers, so the check shows a block without deducting for it.
In the top 1,000 websites
- 15.1% block it in robots.txt (86 of the 569 sites with a robots.txt), as of 2026-10-12.
- Method, limits and the full data: the October 2026 study of the top 1,000 websites.
What blocking it costs
Nothing in today's answers, and nothing in the readiness score: Applebot-Extended only gathers training data, so blocking it is a policy choice about future models, not about being found. The check lists the block without deducting for it.
The robots.txt lines
To let it in (a group that names the crawler replaces any wildcard rules for it, so this also lifts a User-agent: * block):
User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Allow: /To keep it out:
User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Disallow: /A rule in robots.txt is a request. Apple Intelligence says this crawler honours it. The robots.txt generator writes a whole file with the same split: block the training crawlers, keep the search and answer crawlers.
Does Applebot-Extended get through on your site?
Run the free check: it reads your robots.txt against all 51 crawlers and tells you which ones can read you, and what to change.