Amzn-SearchBot: robots token, verification and how to allow or disallow it
Amzn-SearchBot is an AI crawler operated by Amazon. Its robots.txt token is Amzn-SearchBot, and the vendor documentation we fetched on 2026-09-17 is the source for every statement on this page.
| Robots token | Amzn-SearchBot |
|---|---|
| Vendor | Amazon |
| Purpose | search index |
| Documented verification | published IP ranges |
| Vendor documentation last verified | 2026-09-17 |
| Share of read domains disallowing it for / | 4.3% of 12373 |
| Last verified |
Identity
| Robots token | Amzn-SearchBot |
|---|---|
| Matched as | amzn-searchbot |
| Vendor | Amazon |
| Purpose | search index |
| Documentation | https://developer.amazon.com/amazonbot |
| Documented verification | published IP ranges: https://developer.amazon.com/amazonbot/searchbot-ip-addresses/ |
Vendor text fetched on 2026-09-17: 'Amzn-SearchBot is used to improve search experiences in Amazon products and services.' The same page states 'Amzn-SearchBot does not crawl content for generative AI model training', so no training purpose is recorded here. It is covered by the page's robots.txt section: 'Automated crawling from these listed user agents respects the Robots Exclusion Protocol, honoring the user-agent and the allow/disallow directives.' Documented UA sample contains 'compatible; Amzn-SearchBot/0.1'.
Allow or disallow it
User-agent: Amzn-SearchBot Allow: /
User-agent: Amzn-SearchBot Disallow: /
A robots.txt rule is a request that a well behaved crawler honours. It is not an access control, and this page does not tell anyone what to choose.
Build a robots.txt with Amzn-SearchBot and every other documented token
Questions
Does Amzn-SearchBot obey robots.txt?
The vendor documentation at https://developer.amazon.com/amazonbot states that Amzn-SearchBot respects robots.txt. We fetched that page and it answered our checker on 2026-09-17. This records what the vendor documents, not what any individual request did.
How do I allow Amzn-SearchBot in robots.txt?
Add this group to the robots.txt at the root of the host: User-agent: Amzn-SearchBot Allow: /. The token is matched case insensitively as a substring of the user agent by RFC 9309, and the longest matching rule wins.
How do I disallow Amzn-SearchBot in robots.txt?
Add this group to the robots.txt at the root of the host: User-agent: Amzn-SearchBot Disallow: /. A robots.txt rule is a request that a well behaved crawler honours; it is not an access control.
How do I verify a request really came from Amzn-SearchBot?
The vendor publishes the IP ranges this crawler fetches from at https://developer.amazon.com/amazonbot/searchbot-ip-addresses/. Check the address of the request against that file. A user agent string on its own proves nothing, because anyone can send one.
What we measure
Of the 12373 seeded domains whose robots.txt we have read, 534 disallow Amzn-SearchBot for / and 11839 allow it, which is 4.3% disallowed, week 2026-W41. Counts only: no domain is named.
The weekly AI crawler access index
Sources
| Source | Type | HTTP | Verified | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| https://developer.amazon.com/amazonbot | vendor | 200 | 2026-09-17 | 9 occurrences of Amazonbot, 8 of Amzn-SearchBot and 7 of Amzn-User; robots.txt discussed 10 times; the page names one published IP address URL per user agent |
| https://developer.amazon.com/amazonbot/searchbot-ip-addresses/ | vendor | 200 | 2026-09-17 | the published IP list for this user agent, printed as JSON inside a code block on the page rather than served as a JSON document: 816 prefixes under a prefixes array with an ip_prefix field, creationTime 2026-09-08. Identical bytes and hash on two fetches on 2026-09-17, so it is not a volatile source; also refreshed weekly into data/bot_ranges.json |
Free data
- The AEO Watch dataset
- Tranco top 1,000 AI crawler policy (CSV, CC BY 4.0)
- The AEO Watch API
- The checker as a command line tool (one file, no install)
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AEO Watch is an independent, factual monitor. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or speaking for any crawler vendor. Every statement is an observation with the date it was made and the raw evidence behind it: a robots.txt line, an HTTP status code, a header. There are no scores, no grades and no verdicts here, and nothing on this page is advice. A site opts out at any time and the opt out is honoured automatically and permanently.