AppleInsider Staff
Apple has confirmed the existence of a long-rumored web crawling service — first noticed last November — Â and provided some details of its operations in a recently-updated support document.
According to Apple, AppleBot is a crawler that primarily serves Siri and Spotlight. Both services offer web search capabilities, though until now it was thought that Apple routed queries through an existing search engine such as Google or Bing.
AppleBot operates similarly to Google's Googlebot, and Apple advises developers that it will follow Googlebot instructions if no AppleBot-specific instructions are found. Website operators are urged to contact Apple's network operations center if they have questions or concerns about the crawler.
It's not clear how long AppleBot has been operational in production. The support document first appeared in February, but was only populated with content last month.
One web developer spotted Apple's crawler last November, after seeing numerous hits from a crawler in the 17.0.0.0/8 block. That block is assigned to Apple, one of just a handful of companies that control an entire A block.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
82 Comments
Interesting
Maybe 'search' without selling ads is coming? If Apple ever do release this technology as a fully fledged search tool for the great unwashed I wonder what it would be called. Maybe just 'Siri'? I truly hope Apple do this and free us from the warped and biased searches Google now offer. (Bait ... )
Wow. Apple has really opened up in some area, much better than some other "open" company, yea, Google, I am talking about you.
[quote name="mubaili" url="/t/186141/apple-details-new-applebot-web-crawler-used-by-siri-and-spotlight#post_2720279"]Wow. Apple has really opened up in some area, much better than some other "open" company, yea, Google, I am talking about you.[/quote] Don't worry, Google is listening to you ... trying to figure out what ads to send you ... lol
Wow. Apple has really opened up in some area, much better than some other "open" company, yea, Google, I am talking about you.
What are you talking about? So because Apple is using their own Applebot to fulfill Siri queries that means they opened up?
There's absolutely nothing wrong with Google.