Site Rules For Applebot-Extended Are Not Considered In Ranking For Search

Apple updated its Applebot help documentation to state that site rules for Applebot-Extended are not considered in ranking for Search, clarifying the distinction between Applebot-Extended and Search as the release of iOS 27 approaches. The change, highlighted in the documentation, separates Applebot-Extended's crawling behavior from search ranking, similar to Google's Googlebot-Extended policy.

Apple has updated its help documentation for Applebot https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829 over the weekend and added a single line at the end that reads, "Site rules for Applebot-Extended are not considered in ranking for Search." Applebot-Extended https://www.seroundtable.com/apple-updates-applebot-docs-39310.html is not new; we covered it in April 2025, but here Apple is making it clear, like with Googlebot-Extended https://www.seroundtable.com/google-sge-extended-robots-directive-36182.html , that Applebot-Extended is separate from Search. The yellow highlighted part I added the highlight is what was added, outside of the date-stamp change at the bottom of the page: I guess before the release of iOS 27 to the public, which should be coming out in the next couple of weeks, Apple wanted to make sure the new Siri and Apple Intelligence https://www.seroundtable.com/siri-ai-41471.html is clearly defined for what Applebot-Extended can and cannot do with your website. Here is the diff for the page: Forum discussion at X https://x.com/rustybrick/status/2096919155672785100 .