Safe Official docs Cloud Services

Amazonbot

Q: What is the official user-agent string for Amazonbot?

The official user-agent string for Amazonbot is: Amazonbot . This is the exact string you must use in robots.txt, Nginx, Apache, or Cloudflare firewall rules to target this bot. User-agent matching in robots.txt is case-insensitive, but the string must be spelled correctly. You can verify that a request genuinely comes from Amazonbot by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP - legitimate bots resolve back to their operator's domain.

Q: Is Amazonbot safe?

Yes, Amazonbot is a safe and legitimate crawler. It is operated by Amazon, which publicly documents its crawler at an official URL and follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309). The user-agent string Amazonbot is verifiable via reverse-DNS lookup on the crawling IP addresses. You can safely allow it unless you have a specific reason to block (e.g., AI training opt-out or SEO tool visibility).

Q: Will blocking Amazonbot hurt my SEO?

❓ Impact Unknown - The SEO consequences of blocking Amazonbot are not fully documented. Before blocking, check your analytics to confirm whether this bot generates referral traffic, review your server logs for crawl frequency, and test in a staging environment if possible.

Q: How do I block Amazonbot in robots.txt?

Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file: User-agent: Amazonbot Disallow: / This instructs Amazonbot not to crawl any path on your site. The Disallow: / directive covers the entire domain including subfolders. To only block specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g., Disallow: /blog/ ). Note: robots.txt is publicly readable - any bot or human can inspect it at yourdomain.com/robots.txt .

Q: How do I verify if Amazonbot is crawling my site?

Search your web server access logs for the string Amazonbot (case-insensitive grep: grep -i "Amazonbot" /var/log/nginx/access.log ). You can also check Google Search Console → Coverage → Crawl Stats for Googlebot variants. For Amazonbot specifically, filter by user-agent in your log analysis tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).

Operated by Amazon

Scout's quick take

Amazonbot collects pages for Amazon's AI training. Blocking it keeps your content out of future training runs and does not change your Google or Bing rankings.

User-agent: Amazonbot
Disallow: /

Check AI bot crawlability Build a full robots.txt

Quick Facts

User-Agent:: Amazonbot
Category:: Cloud Services
Operator:: Amazon
Safety:: Safe
Blocking Impact:: Varies - Evaluate before blocking
SEO Impact Score:: 0/10
Official docs:: developer.amazon.com

Confirmed by the operator

Amazon names Amazonbot on its own documentation page, linked above. The token, purpose and robots.txt behaviour on this profile come from that page, re-checked on October 19, 2026.

What is Amazonbot?

Amazon's general-purpose web crawler. It indexes content for Alexa answers and improves Amazon product search results. It is separate from the AWS IP ranges.

Amazon's general-purpose web crawler. It indexes content for Alexa answers and improves Amazon product search results. It is separate from the AWS IP ranges.
Amazonbot is operated by Amazon as part of their cloud infrastructure stack. It may perform security scanning, CDN pre-warming, or threat intelligence collection. It uses the user-agent Amazonbot. Evaluate whether your site uses Amazon services before blocking, as this crawler may be required for service functionality.

What happens if you block Amazonbot?

❓ Impact Unknown - The SEO consequences of blocking Amazonbot are not fully documented. Before blocking, check your analytics to confirm whether this bot generates referral traffic, review your server logs for crawl frequency, and test in a staging environment if possible.

Generally safe to allow; provides legitimate crawling value.

How to block Amazonbot with robots.txt

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

Block completely (robots.txt)

User-agent: Amazonbot
Disallow: /

Allow all (robots.txt)

User-agent: Amazonbot
Allow: /

Block private only (robots.txt)

User-agent: Amazonbot
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /admin/
Allow: /

Nginx server block

# Nginx: Hard-block Amazonbot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Amazonbot") {
    return 403 "Bot blocked";
}

Apache .htaccess

# Apache: Hard-block Amazonbot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "Amazonbot" bad_bot
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=bad_bot

Meta robots tag

X-Robots-Tag header

X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow

Is Amazonbot safe to allow?

Yes, Amazonbot is a safe and legitimate crawler. It is operated by Amazon, which publicly documents its crawler at an official URL and follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309). The user-agent string Amazonbot is verifiable via reverse-DNS lookup on the crawling IP addresses. You can safely allow it unless you have a specific reason to block (e.g., AI training opt-out or SEO tool visibility).

Verify by reverse-DNS lookup: legitimate Amazonbot requests resolve to amazon's domain.

What does Amazonbot do?

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

Monitors website uptime and performance
Provides cloud-based analytics and insights
May be part of CDN or security services
Performs health checks and availability tests
Supports infrastructure and DevOps tools

Amazonbot in context

Amazonbot is a training crawler operated by Amazon. In plain terms, it collects pages to train AI models. Our database files it under cloud services and ranks it Tier 2, important crawlers from established AI and search operators. 1 of the 3 cloud services in our database share this tier.

Its safety rating is safe and its blocking impact is low. So the decision about Amazonbot rests on what you want from Amazon, not on its behaviour. How we rate safety and impact.

How site owners treat Amazonbot

In our own study of robots.txt files across the Tranco top 10,000 sites (fetched October 20, 2026, 5,583 valid files), 593 files (10.6%) name Amazonbot in a User-agent line, and 680 (12.2%) block it from the homepage. 464 of those blocks come from a group written for this crawler by name, and 216 come from a broad User-agent: * rule that catches it by accident. Larger sites are stricter: 15.6% of the top 1,000 block it, against 11.7% of the middle band and 11.9% of the tail.

Does it follow robots.txt?

Amazonbot's operator says it follows robots.txt, so a correctly written Amazonbot group is enough to control it.

Amazon crawlers and close alternatives

Amazonbot is one of 8 Amazon crawlers in our database. A User-agent: Amazonbot group controls Amazonbot only; the other Amazon tokens below need their own lines.

Amazonbot: this crawler (Tier 2)
Amazon Kendra: Amazon Kendra, harvests pages for a dataset or data product (Tier 6)
amazon-QBusiness: Amazon Q Business, builds a search or answer index (Tier 3)
AmazonBuyForMe: Amazon Buy For Me, fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it (Tier 2)
Amzn-SearchBot: Amzn-SearchBot, builds a search or answer index (Tier 3)
Amzn-User: Amazon User Agent, fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it (Tier 2)
bedrockbot: AWS Bedrock Bot, collects pages to train AI models (Tier 2)
NovaAct: Amazon Nova Act, harvests pages for a dataset or data product (Tier 2)

To give Amazonbot the same answer as its siblings, stack User-agent: Amazonbot with their lines above one set of rules; to treat Amazonbot differently, give it its own group.

No other crawler in our cloud services category has exactly the same purpose, which makes Amazonbot an unusual case: decide about it on its own merits.

We first recorded Amazonbot on March 17, 2026. Amazon documents it on developer.amazon.com, and we recheck that page before each release.

Which rule Amazonbot actually follows

Amazonbot reads exactly one group in robots.txt, the most specific one that names Amazonbot, and never combines rules across groups. This short file shows the trap:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/

User-agent: Amazonbot
Disallow: /drafts/

Find the group. Amazonbot looks for a group naming Amazonbot. One exists, so it ignores User-agent: * completely.
Apply only that group. It is refused /drafts/ and nothing else.
The surprise. /private/ is open to Amazonbot, because that rule lives in the * group it no longer reads. To keep it out of both, repeat Disallow: /private/ inside its own group.

Test yourself: does a rule under User-agent: * apply to Amazonbot if the file also has a User-agent: Amazonbot group?

No. Once a group names it, Amazonbot reads only that group. Put every rule you want it to follow inside its own group.

Test yourself: will blocking Amazonbot remove your pages from AI answers?

No. Amazonbot collects training data. Blocking it changes what future models learn, not which pages AI answers cite today.

Test yourself: is User-agent: amazonbot the same as User-agent: Amazonbot?

Yes. RFC 9309 makes user-agent matching case-insensitive. Paths are a different story: Disallow: /Blog/ does not block /blog/.

Should you allow Amazonbot? Decide by situation

Recommended setting for Amazonbot by type of site
If you are...	Recommended setting
You publish content and want AI answers to cite it	Your call. Amazonbot is a training crawler, so blocking it does not remove you from AI answers; retrieval crawlers do that job.
You license content and want to stop AI training	Block it by name with `User-agent: Amazonbot` and `Disallow: /`.
You run an online shop	Allow it unless your logs show it is costly.
Your server is under load from bots	Rate-limit before blocking. It is rated safe in our database.

Check Amazonbot on your own site

Open /robots.txt on your domain and search for Amazonbot. If it is not named, it follows User-agent: *.
List the Disallow lines in the group Amazonbot follows and test your key URLs against them; the longest match wins, and Allow wins a tie.
Look beyond the file. A firewall or bot manager can refuse Amazonbot even when robots.txt allows it, and that never shows in the file.
Run our crawler access checker to see how Amazonbot and every other crawler we track are treated in one pass, including firewall refusals.

Common mistakes with Amazonbot

The errors we see most often with Amazonbot in the files and firewalls we test:

Assuming that blocking Amazonbot removes you from AI answers. It is a training crawler; AI answers are fed by retrieval and user-triggered crawlers with different tokens.
Blocking Amazonbot with a broad User-agent: * rule that also catches search engines. Name Amazonbot in its own group instead.
Expecting a Amazonbot block to remove content already collected. robots.txt only affects future visits.

All three hide inside a file that looks correct, so check Amazonbot from outside after every change.

Spotting Amazonbot in your logs

robots.txt says what Amazonbot may do; your access logs show what it actually did.

Count requests

On a server with standard Nginx or Apache logs, this counts matching requests per day (adjust the log path for your host):

grep -iE "Amazonbot" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
  | awk '{print $4}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c

And this shows which paths it requested most, which is the quickest way to see whether your Disallow lines are being respected:

grep -iE "Amazonbot" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
  | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20

Check the requests are genuine

Anyone can send the Amazonbot user-agent, so confirm the source before acting on a match:

Amazonbot: we hold no published IP list, so use reverse DNS where the operator documents a hostname and treat an unverifiable Amazonbot request with caution.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the official user-agent string for Amazonbot?

The official user-agent string for Amazonbot is: Amazonbot. This is the exact string you must use in robots.txt, Nginx, Apache, or Cloudflare firewall rules to target this bot. User-agent matching in robots.txt is case-insensitive, but the string must be spelled correctly. You can verify that a request genuinely comes from Amazonbot by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP - legitimate bots resolve back to their operator's domain.

Is Amazonbot safe?

Will blocking Amazonbot hurt my SEO?

How do I block Amazonbot in robots.txt?

Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file:

User-agent: Amazonbot
Disallow: /

This instructs Amazonbot not to crawl any path on your site. The Disallow: / directive covers the entire domain including subfolders. To only block specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g., Disallow: /blog/). Note: robots.txt is publicly readable - any bot or human can inspect it at yourdomain.com/robots.txt.

Does Amazonbot respect robots.txt?

Yes - Amazonbot is a well-behaved bot operated by Amazon. It fetches and parses /robots.txt before crawling any page, following RFC 9309.

How do I verify if Amazonbot is crawling my site?

Search your web server access logs for the string Amazonbot (case-insensitive grep: grep -i "Amazonbot" /var/log/nginx/access.log). You can also check Google Search Console → Coverage → Crawl Stats for Googlebot variants. For Amazonbot specifically, filter by user-agent in your log analysis tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).

What is the crawl frequency of Amazonbot?

Amazonbot crawls at a moderate rate. If you notice excessive traffic in your logs, you can add a Crawl-delay directive:

User-agent: Amazonbot
Crawl-delay: 10

(10 second delay between requests).

Can I block Amazonbot from specific pages only?

Yes. Instead of a global Disallow: / you can restrict Amazonbot to specific paths:

User-agent: Amazonbot
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /staging/
Allow: /

This allows Amazonbot everywhere except the listed paths. Path matching in robots.txt uses prefix matching - Disallow: /private/ blocks /private/page.html but NOT /public/private/.