Rattlesnakes By Mail

Applebot vs Applebot-Extended

Applebot and Applebot-Extended compared on 13 documented fields, from 19 claims, last verified 2026-09-15.

FieldApplebotApplebot-ExtendedComparison
cites_sourcesyesnot documenteddifferent
fallback_to_googlebot_rulesyesnot documenteddifferent
honours_crawl_delaynon/adifferent
observed_paths_fetchedrobots_txt_and_home_onlynot documenteddifferent
publishes_ip_listyesnodifferent
purpose_documentedmixedpolicy_onlydifferent
reads_llms_txtnot_documentednot documenteddifferent
respects_robots_txtyesn/adifferent
robots_token_differs_from_uanot documentedyesdifferent
separate_search_and_training_tokenspartialyesdifferent
user_agent_string_fullMozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.4 Safari/605.1.15 (Applebot/0.1; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot)not documenteddifferent
verifiable_by_rdnsyesn/adifferent
what_it_controlsnot documentedAI training use of content, not search indexingdifferent

Differences

FieldApplebot statementApplebot-Extended statement
cites_sourcesApple includes links to source websites in Siri and Search answers to broad world knowledge questions.not documented
fallback_to_googlebot_rulesApplebot follows Googlebot robots.txt instructions when a robots.txt file mentions Googlebot but not Applebot.not documented
honours_crawl_delayApplebot does not follow the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive.Apple does not publish a Crawl-delay behaviour for Applebot-Extended.
observed_paths_fetchedApplebot made 6 requests to Rattlesnakes By Mail between 2026-09-13T20:00Z and 2026-09-15T09:00Z, to 2 distinct paths, /robots.txt and the home page. Applebot's 6 requests to Rattlesnakes By Mail run from 2026-09-14T12:22:23Z to 2026-09-14T12:59:26Z and alternate the two paths three times.not documented
publishes_ip_listApple publishes the IP address CIDR ranges used by Applebot as a JSON file at https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json.Apple publishes no IP list specific to Applebot-Extended and documents one shared crawl identity for Applebot.
purpose_documentedApplebot crawls content for Apple search results and for training Apple foundation models.Applebot-Extended controls whether website content is used to train Apple general purpose foundation models.
reads_llms_txtApple does not publish whether Applebot reads llms.txt files.not documented
respects_robots_txtApplebot respects standard robots.txt directives targeted at Applebot in general search crawls.Applebot-Extended is a robots.txt token that publishers disallow to opt out of generative model training.
robots_token_differs_from_uanot documentedApplebot-Extended is a robots.txt control token and does not correspond to a separate crawler user agent string.
separate_search_and_training_tokensApple uses one crawler token, Applebot, for search crawling and for training crawling, and a second robots.txt token, Applebot-Extended, that opts content out of training use.Webpages that disallow Applebot-Extended remain eligible for inclusion in Apple search results.
user_agent_string_fullApplebot sends the desktop user agent string Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.4 Safari/605.1.15 (Applebot/0.1; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot).not documented
verifiable_by_rdnsApplebot traffic is verifiable by reverse DNS lookup in the applebot.apple.com domain.Apple does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method specific to Applebot-Extended.
what_it_controlsnot documentedApplebot-Extended controls the AI training use of crawled content and does not control search indexing.

Sources