# Applebot vs Google-Extended

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

| Field | Applebot | Google-Extended | Comparison |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | yes | not documented | different |
| fallback_to_googlebot_rules | yes | not documented | different |
| honours_crawl_delay | no | n/a | different |
| observed_paths_fetched | robots_txt_and_home_only | not documented | different |
| publishes_ip_list | yes | no | different |
| purpose_documented | mixed | policy_only | different |
| reads_llms_txt | not_documented | not documented | different |
| respects_robots_txt | yes | n/a | different |
| robots_token_differs_from_ua | not documented | yes | different |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | partial | yes | different |
| user_agent_string_full | 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 | different |
| verifiable_by_rdns | yes | n/a | different |
| what_it_controls | not documented | Gemini model training and grounding, not Search inclusion | different |

## Differences

| Field | Applebot statement | Google-Extended statement |
| --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | Apple includes links to source websites in Siri and Search answers to broad world knowledge questions. | not documented |
| fallback_to_googlebot_rules | Applebot follows Googlebot robots.txt instructions when a robots.txt file mentions Googlebot but not Applebot. | not documented |
| honours_crawl_delay | Applebot does not follow the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive. | Google does not publish any Crawl-delay behaviour for the Google-Extended token. |
| observed_paths_fetched | 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. | not documented |
| publishes_ip_list | Apple publishes the IP address CIDR ranges used by Applebot as a JSON file at https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json. | Google publishes no IP list for Google-Extended because Google-Extended has no separate HTTP request user agent string. |
| purpose_documented | Applebot crawls content for Apple search results and for training Apple foundation models. | Google-Extended is a standalone product token that controls whether Google uses crawled content to train Gemini models. |
| reads_llms_txt | Apple does not publish whether Applebot reads llms.txt files. | not documented |
| respects_robots_txt | Applebot respects standard robots.txt directives targeted at Applebot in general search crawls. | Google-Extended is a robots.txt token that publishers set to control use of crawled content for Gemini training. |
| robots_token_differs_from_ua | not documented | Google-Extended is a robots.txt control token and does not correspond to a crawler user agent string. |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | 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. | Google-Extended controls Gemini training use only and does not affect inclusion in Google Search. |
| user_agent_string_full | 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). | not documented |
| verifiable_by_rdns | Applebot traffic is verifiable by reverse DNS lookup in the applebot.apple.com domain. | Google does not publish a reverse-DNS verification method for Google-Extended. |
| what_it_controls | not documented | Google-Extended controls AI training and grounding in Google systems and does not control Google Search inclusion. |

## Sources

- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers
- https://rattlesnakesbymail.com/observed/applebot
- https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829