{
  "entity_a": {
    "slug": "applebot",
    "name": "Applebot"
  },
  "entity_b": {
    "slug": "bingbot",
    "name": "Bingbot"
  },
  "fields_documented": 13,
  "claims": 22,
  "last_verified": "2026-09-15",
  "fields": [
    {
      "field": "cites_sources",
      "value_a": "yes",
      "value_b": "yes",
      "claim_id_a": 15,
      "claim_id_b": 127,
      "same": true
    },
    {
      "field": "fallback_to_googlebot_rules",
      "value_a": "yes",
      "value_b": null,
      "claim_id_a": 18,
      "claim_id_b": null,
      "same": false
    },
    {
      "field": "follows_noarchive",
      "value_a": null,
      "value_b": "yes",
      "claim_id_a": null,
      "claim_id_b": 131,
      "same": false
    },
    {
      "field": "honours_crawl_delay",
      "value_a": "no",
      "value_b": "yes",
      "claim_id_a": 10,
      "claim_id_b": 122,
      "same": false
    },
    {
      "field": "observed_paths_fetched",
      "value_a": "robots_txt_and_home_only",
      "value_b": null,
      "claim_id_a": 150,
      "claim_id_b": null,
      "same": false
    },
    {
      "field": "opt_out_mechanism",
      "value_a": null,
      "value_b": "yes",
      "claim_id_a": null,
      "claim_id_b": 130,
      "same": false
    },
    {
      "field": "publishes_ip_list",
      "value_a": "yes",
      "value_b": "yes",
      "claim_id_a": 11,
      "claim_id_b": 123,
      "same": true
    },
    {
      "field": "purpose_documented",
      "value_a": "mixed",
      "value_b": "yes",
      "claim_id_a": 13,
      "claim_id_b": 125,
      "same": false
    },
    {
      "field": "reads_llms_txt",
      "value_a": "not_documented",
      "value_b": "not_documented",
      "claim_id_a": 16,
      "claim_id_b": 128,
      "same": true
    },
    {
      "field": "respects_robots_txt",
      "value_a": "yes",
      "value_b": "yes",
      "claim_id_a": 9,
      "claim_id_b": 121,
      "same": true
    },
    {
      "field": "separate_search_and_training_tokens",
      "value_a": "partial",
      "value_b": "no",
      "claim_id_a": 14,
      "claim_id_b": 126,
      "same": false
    },
    {
      "field": "user_agent_string_full",
      "value_a": "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)",
      "value_b": "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)",
      "claim_id_a": 17,
      "claim_id_b": 129,
      "same": false
    },
    {
      "field": "verifiable_by_rdns",
      "value_a": "yes",
      "value_b": "yes",
      "claim_id_a": 12,
      "claim_id_b": 124,
      "same": true
    }
  ],
  "differences": [
    {
      "field": "fallback_to_googlebot_rules",
      "statement_a": "Applebot follows Googlebot robots.txt instructions when a robots.txt file mentions Googlebot but not Applebot.",
      "statement_b": null,
      "claim_id_a": 18,
      "claim_id_b": null
    },
    {
      "field": "follows_noarchive",
      "statement_a": null,
      "statement_b": "Bingbot excludes noarchive-tagged content from Copilot and Chat answers and from generative AI training data.",
      "claim_id_a": null,
      "claim_id_b": 131
    },
    {
      "field": "honours_crawl_delay",
      "statement_a": "Applebot does not follow the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive.",
      "statement_b": "Microsoft states that a crawl-delay directive in robots.txt always takes precedence over Bing Webmaster Tools crawl control settings for Bingbot.",
      "claim_id_a": 10,
      "claim_id_b": 122
    },
    {
      "field": "observed_paths_fetched",
      "statement_a": "Applebot 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.",
      "statement_b": null,
      "claim_id_a": 150,
      "claim_id_b": null
    },
    {
      "field": "opt_out_mechanism",
      "statement_a": null,
      "statement_b": "Microsoft lets publishers block Bingbot content from Copilot answers and AI training using noarchive and nocache tags.",
      "claim_id_a": null,
      "claim_id_b": 130
    },
    {
      "field": "purpose_documented",
      "statement_a": "Applebot crawls content for Apple search results and for training Apple foundation models.",
      "statement_b": "Bingbot serves as Microsoft's standard crawler and handles most of Bing's daily web crawling.",
      "claim_id_a": 13,
      "claim_id_b": 125
    },
    {
      "field": "separate_search_and_training_tokens",
      "statement_a": "Apple 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.",
      "statement_b": "Microsoft controls Bingbot's use in AI training through meta tags rather than publishing a separate training-specific crawler token.",
      "claim_id_a": 14,
      "claim_id_b": 126
    },
    {
      "field": "user_agent_string_full",
      "statement_a": "Applebot 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).",
      "statement_b": "Bingbot sends a user agent string containing bingbot/2.0 and a link to Microsoft's bingbot.htm page.",
      "claim_id_a": 17,
      "claim_id_b": 129
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    "https://blogs.bing.com/search/April-2025/Introducing-Copilot-Search-in-Bing",
    "https://rattlesnakesbymail.com/observed/applebot",
    "https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json",
    "https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829",
    "https://www.bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json",
    "https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/ai-performance-9f8e7d6c",
    "https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/crawl-control-55a30303",
    "https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/how-to-verify-bingbot-3905dc26",
    "https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/robots-meta-tags-and-attributes-that-bing-supports-5198d240",
    "https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/which-crawlers-does-bing-use-8c184ec0"
  ]
}