Caution Official docs AI & LLM Bots

Kimi Crawler

Operated by Moonshot AI

Quick Facts

User-Agent:
KimiBot
Category:
AI & LLM Bots
Operator:
Moonshot AI
Safety:
Use Caution
Blocking Impact:
Low - No SEO ranking impact
SEO Impact Score:
2/10
Official docs:
www.kimi.ai

Confirmed by the operator

Moonshot AI names KimiBot on its own documentation page, linked above. The token, purpose and robots.txt behaviour on this profile come from that page, re-checked on September 22, 2026.

What is Kimi Crawler?

Kimi Crawler is an AI data-collection crawler operated by Moonshot AI. It gathers public web content to build or refine training datasets for large language models. Like other AI training crawlers, Kimi Crawler does not influence your search-engine rankings, so you can block it via robots.txt without any SEO penalty if you wish to opt out of AI training.

Kimi Crawler is an AI data-collection crawler operated by Moonshot AI. It gathers public web content to build or refine training datasets for large language models. Like other AI training crawlers, Kimi Crawler does not influence your search-engine rankings, so you can block it via robots.txt without any SEO penalty if you wish to opt out of AI training.
Kimi Crawler uses the user-agent token KimiBot. You can control it via robots.txt, meta tags (noai), or the emerging llms.txt standard. Robots.txt is voluntary; for hard enforcement, combine it with server-level IP blocking.

What happens if you block Kimi Crawler?

✅ No SEO Impact - Blocking Kimi Crawler does not affect your rankings in Google, Bing, or any other search engine. Kimi Crawler is an AI crawler, not a traditional search indexer. You can freely block it via User-agent / Disallow: / without any SEO penalty.
Generally safe to allow; provides legitimate crawling value.

Want to see whether Kimi Crawler actually visits you? Read how do I monitor AI bot traffic to my website?

How to block Kimi Crawler with robots.txt

<code>User-agent: KimiBot</code> - Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately.

Block completely (robots.txt)
User-agent: KimiBot Disallow: /
Allow all (robots.txt)
User-agent: KimiBot Allow: /
Block private only (robots.txt)
User-agent: KimiBot Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /api/ Disallow: /admin/ Allow: /
Nginx server block
# Nginx: Hard-block Kimi Crawler if ($http_user_agent ~* "KimiBot") { return 403 "Bot blocked"; }
Apache .htaccess
# Apache: Hard-block Kimi Crawler SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "KimiBot" bad_bot Order Allow,Deny Allow from all Deny from env=bad_bot
Meta robots tag
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">
X-Robots-Tag header
X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow

Is Kimi Crawler safe to allow?

Kimi Crawler is generally legitimate but warrants caution. It is operated by Moonshot AI. Review its crawl behaviour in your logs and apply robots.txt or rate-limiting if its activity is heavier than you expect.
Verify by reverse-DNS lookup: legitimate Kimi Crawler requests resolve to Moonshot AI's domain.

What does Kimi Crawler do?

Understanding Kimi Crawler's purpose helps you decide whether to allow or block it.

  • Collects public web content to train large language models
  • Builds and refreshes AI training datasets
  • Harvests text, code, and structured data for model improvement
  • Does NOT affect search-engine rankings
  • Can be blocked to opt out of AI training without SEO loss

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the official user-agent string for Kimi Crawler?
The official user-agent string for Kimi Crawler is: KimiBot. Use this exact string in robots.txt, Nginx, Apache, or Cloudflare firewall rules to target this bot. Matching in robots.txt is case-insensitive. Verify a request genuinely comes from Kimi Crawler by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP.
Is Kimi Crawler safe?
Kimi Crawler is generally legitimate but warrants caution. It is operated by Moonshot AI. Review its crawl behaviour in your logs and apply robots.txt or rate-limiting if its activity is heavier than you expect.
Will blocking Kimi Crawler hurt my SEO?
✅ No SEO Impact - Blocking Kimi Crawler does not affect your rankings in Google, Bing, or any other search engine. Kimi Crawler is an AI crawler, not a traditional search indexer. You can freely block it via User-agent / Disallow: / without any SEO penalty.
How do I block Kimi Crawler in robots.txt?
Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file:
User-agent: KimiBot
Disallow: /

This instructs Kimi Crawler not to crawl any path on your site. To block only specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g., Disallow: /blog/).
Does Kimi Crawler respect robots.txt?
Kimi Crawler is operated by Moonshot AI and is expected to fetch and parse /robots.txt before crawling, following RFC 9309. For hard enforcement, combine robots.txt with server-level IP or user-agent blocking.
How do I verify if Kimi Crawler is crawling my site?
Search your web server access logs for the string KimiBot (case-insensitive: grep -i "KimiBot" /var/log/nginx/access.log). Filter by user-agent in your log analytics tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).

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