# Applebot vs Googlebot

Applebot and Googlebot compared on 12 documented fields, from 21 claims, last verified 2026-09-15.

| Field | Applebot | Googlebot | Comparison |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | yes | yes | same |
| fallback_to_googlebot_rules | yes | not documented | different |
| honours_crawl_delay | no | no | same |
| observed_paths_fetched | robots_txt_and_home_only | not documented | different |
| observed_verified_request_ratio_census | not documented | 0.991 | different |
| publishes_ip_list | yes | yes | same |
| purpose_documented | mixed | search | different |
| reads_llms_txt | not_documented | no | different |
| respects_robots_txt | yes | yes | same |
| 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) | Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) | different |
| verifiable_by_rdns | yes | yes | same |

## Differences

| Field | Applebot statement | Googlebot statement |
| --- | --- | --- |
| fallback_to_googlebot_rules | Applebot follows Googlebot robots.txt instructions when a robots.txt file mentions Googlebot but not Applebot. | not documented |
| 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 |
| observed_verified_request_ratio_census | not documented | Googlebot requests to Rattlesnakes By Mail matched Google's published IP ranges on 108 of 109 requests between 2026-09-13T20:00Z and 2026-09-15T09:00Z. Googlebot's first request to Rattlesnakes By Mail in that window was /robots.txt at 2026-09-14T11:53:00Z. |
| purpose_documented | Applebot crawls content for Apple search results and for training Apple foundation models. | Googlebot crawls pages for Google Search, Google Images, Google Video, Google News, and Discover. |
| reads_llms_txt | Apple does not publish whether Applebot reads llms.txt files. | Google Search does not use llms.txt files. |
| 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 separates Search crawling under the Googlebot token from Gemini training under the Google-Extended token. |
| 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). | Googlebot sends the user agent string Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html). |

## Sources

- https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/verifying-googlebot
- https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/07/a-note-on-unsupported-rules-in-robotstxt
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide
- https://developers.google.com/static/crawling/ipranges/common-crawlers.json
- https://rattlesnakesbymail.com/observed/applebot
- https://rattlesnakesbymail.com/observed/googlebot
- https://search.developer.apple.com/applebot.json
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829