Kimi (Moonshot AI)
SafeUser-agent: Kimi-User
Category: AI & LLM Bots
SEO impact if blocked: 2/10
Moonshot AI
3 crawlers operated by Moonshot AI
https://www.moonshot.ai/Who Moonshot AI is, for site owners
Moonshot AI operates 3 crawlers in our directory, filed under AI & LLM Bots. Of those 3, 2 rated safe, 1 rated caution for crawl behaviour.
Blocking Moonshot AI carries an SEO impact score of 2/10 across its crawlers. Every crawler here carries the same blocking impact: Low - No SEO ranking impact.
Our recommendation for Moonshot AI, set by its least reassuring crawler (Kimi Crawler, rated caution): Generally safe to allow; provides legitimate crawling value.
Moonshot AI at a glance
| Operator | Moonshot AI |
|---|---|
| Crawlers in directory | 3 |
| Categories | AI & LLM Bots |
| SEO impact if blocked | 2/10 |
| Crawl behaviour | 2 rated safe, 1 rated caution |
| Website | www.moonshot.ai |
| Official crawler docs | Moonshot AI crawler documentation |
Crawlers operated by Moonshot AI
What Moonshot AI's crawlers are for
Moonshot AI runs 3 crawlers in our database. Grouped by the job each one does:
- a user-triggered agent:
Kimi-User - a training crawler:
KimiBot - a retrieval crawler that feeds AI search answers:
Kimi-SearchBot
The highest-priority token is Tier 2. That puts Moonshot AI among the operators whose crawlers have a direct effect on whether AI answers or search results can include your pages.
How site owners treat Moonshot AI
None of Moonshot AI's tokens were among the names tracked in our robots.txt study of the Tranco top 10,000, which usually means few large sites write rules for them yet. Your own logs are the best evidence of how often they visit.
Writing one policy for Moonshot AI
A robots.txt file cannot say "Moonshot AI"; it can only name Moonshot AI's tokens, one group at a time. So "block Moonshot AI" really means naming each of its 3 tokens, and you can give them different answers.
# Allow Moonshot AI search and assistants, refuse training
User-agent: KimiBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: Kimi-User
User-agent: Kimi-SearchBot
Allow: /- Decide per job, not per company. Training, search and user-triggered fetching have different trade-offs, even from the same operator.
- Name every token you mean. A token you leave out follows
User-agent: *. - Repeat shared rules. A named group ignores the
*group, so copy anyDisallowlines you still want it to obey. - Verify from outside. Run the blocked AI crawler check after any change to see the result for each Moonshot AI token, including firewall refusals.
Test yourself: does User-agent: Moonshot AI block all of Moonshot AI's crawlers?
No. robots.txt matches crawler tokens, not company names. Name each token: Kimi-User, KimiBot, Kimi-SearchBot.
Test yourself: if you block one Moonshot AI token, are the others blocked too?
No. Each token is read separately. Blocking one leaves the rest following whatever group applies to them.
Each Moonshot AI crawler, explained
A one-paragraph brief for every Moonshot AI token in our database, covering what it does, how it treats robots.txt and how often large sites write rules for it:
- Kimi (Moonshot AI) (
Kimi-User, Tier 2): a user-triggered agent that fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it. Rated safe. Kimi (Moonshot AI)'s operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the Kimi (Moonshot AI) rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop. Not tracked in our robots.txt study. - Kimi Crawler (
KimiBot, Tier 2): a training crawler that collects pages to train AI models. Rated caution. Kimi Crawler's operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the Kimi Crawler rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop. Not tracked in our robots.txt study. - Kimi Search (
Kimi-SearchBot, Tier 2): a retrieval crawler that feeds AI search answers that builds a search or answer index. Rated safe. Kimi Search's operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the Kimi Search rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop. Not tracked in our robots.txt study.
Common mistakes with Moonshot AI's crawlers
The errors we see most often with Moonshot AI's crawlers in the files and firewalls we test:
- Assuming a robots.txt rule will stop Moonshot AI's crawlers. User-triggered fetches act for a person, and some operators say robots.txt may not apply to them. Check the operator's statement above.
- Blocking Moonshot AI's crawlers as if it were a bulk crawler. It fetches one page because a person asked; blocking it means that person's assistant cannot read your page.
- Counting Moonshot AI's crawlers visits as crawl volume. Each request maps to a real user question, which makes the paths it requests a useful signal of what people ask about you.
All three hide inside a file that looks correct, so check Moonshot AI's crawlers from outside after every change.
Spotting Moonshot AI in your logs
robots.txt says what Kimi (Moonshot AI) and Kimi Crawler and Kimi Search may do; your access logs show what they 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 "Kimi-User|KimiBot|Kimi-SearchBot" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
| awk '{print $4}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -cAnd this shows which paths it requested most, which is the quickest way to see whether your Disallow lines are being respected:
grep -iE "Kimi-User|KimiBot|Kimi-SearchBot" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
| awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20Check the requests are genuine
Anyone can send these user-agents, so confirm the source before acting on a match:
Kimi-User: we hold no published IP list, so use reverse DNS where Moonshot AI documents a hostname and treat an unverifiable Kimi (Moonshot AI) request with caution. Check it separately from Kimi Crawler and Kimi Search.KimiBot: we hold no published IP list, so use reverse DNS where Moonshot AI documents a hostname and treat an unverifiable Kimi Crawler request with caution. Check it separately from Kimi (Moonshot AI) and Kimi Search.Kimi-SearchBot: we hold no published IP list, so use reverse DNS where Moonshot AI documents a hostname and treat an unverifiable Kimi Search request with caution. Check it separately from Kimi (Moonshot AI) and Kimi Crawler.
What our own data shows about Moonshot AI
Everything below comes from the AI Crawler Check bot database and our two most recent robots.txt scans of the Tranco top 10,000, not from Moonshot AI's marketing. It covers 3 Moonshot AI tokens in turn.
Kimi-User in our records
We first recorded Kimi-User on June 18, 2026. Moonshot AI documents it on kimi.ai, and we recheck that page before each release. No file in our top-10,000 scans names Kimi-User, so any rule you write for it puts you ahead of almost every large site.
Among the 104 AI and LLM crawlers in our database, Kimi-User sits 56th by priority (Tier 2), level with AddSearchBot, AI2Bot, AI2Bot-DeepResearchEval, aiHitBot. 81 of the 104 share its safe rating. Other operators with a crawler that fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it: ChatGPT Agent (OpenAI, Tier 1), ChatGPT Operator (OpenAI, Tier 1), ChatGPT-User (OpenAI, Tier 1), ChatGPT-User/2.0 (OpenAI, Tier 1), Claude-SearchBot (Anthropic, Tier 1). A policy for Kimi-User is usually a policy for these too.
A decision record for Kimi-User
Teams that review crawlers once a quarter keep one short entry per token, so anyone can see why a rule exists and when it was last checked. Filled in from our data, the Kimi-User entry reads:
- Operator and job: Moonshot AI; it fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it.
- Priority and behaviour: Tier 2, rated safe, blocking impact low.
- Suggested starting point: Allow, and watch it in your logs.
- Enforcement: Kimi-User's operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the Kimi-User rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop.
User-agent: Kimi-User
Allow: /Paste the line into the validator with one of your own URLs before it goes live. Revisit the Kimi-User entry whenever Moonshot AI announces a change, because a Tier 2 crawler affects visibility directly.
KimiBot in our records
We first recorded KimiBot on September 22, 2026. Moonshot AI documents it on kimi.ai, and we recheck that page before each release. No file in our top-10,000 scans names KimiBot, so any rule you write for it puts you ahead of almost every large site.
Among the 104 AI and LLM crawlers in our database, KimiBot sits 57th by priority (Tier 2), level with AddSearchBot, AI2Bot, AI2Bot-DeepResearchEval, aiHitBot. 22 of the 104 share its caution rating. Other operators with a crawler that collects pages to train AI models: ClaudeBot (Anthropic, Tier 1), Google-Extended (Google, Tier 1), GPTBot (OpenAI, Tier 1), Meta-ExternalAgent (Meta, Tier 1), AI2Bot (Allen Institute for AI, Tier 2). A policy for KimiBot is usually a policy for these too.
Kimi-SearchBot in our records
We first recorded Kimi-SearchBot on September 22, 2026. Moonshot AI documents it on kimi.ai, and we recheck that page before each release. No file in our top-10,000 scans names Kimi-SearchBot, so any rule you write for it puts you ahead of almost every large site.
Among the 104 AI and LLM crawlers in our database, Kimi-SearchBot sits 55th by priority (Tier 2), level with AddSearchBot, AI2Bot, AI2Bot-DeepResearchEval, aiHitBot. 81 of the 104 share its safe rating. Other operators with a crawler that builds a search or answer index: AddSearchBot (AddSearch, Tier 2), AIWebIndex (Lyrenth, Tier 2), atlassian-bot (Atlassian, Tier 2), AzureAI-SearchBot (Microsoft, Tier 2), Cloudflare-AI-Search (Cloudflare, Tier 2). A policy for Kimi-SearchBot is usually a policy for these too.
How top sites treat Moonshot AI's crawlers
From our robots.txt study of the Tranco top 10,000 (5,583 valid files, fetched October 20, 2026):
None of the tokens for Moonshot AI's crawlers is tracked by name in our study. For scale, 20.1% of top-site files block at least one AI training crawler and 4.3% refuse every unnamed crawler with User-agent: * and Disallow: /, which would catch Moonshot AI's crawlers too.
More questions about Moonshot AI
- Will blocking Moonshot AI affect my Google rankings?
- Only if one of its tokens is a Google search crawler. None of Moonshot AI's tokens are Googlebot, so classic Google rankings are unaffected.
- How quickly does a robots.txt change take effect for Moonshot AI?
- Crawlers cache robots.txt, commonly for up to a day. Expect a change to apply within about 24 hours, and confirm it in your logs.
- Can I allow Moonshot AI on some sections and block it on others?
- Yes. Inside the group for
Kimi-User, addDisallowlines for the paths to keep private andAllowlines for exceptions. The longest matching rule wins. - Does blocking Moonshot AI delete content it already collected?
- No. robots.txt only controls future visits. For content already collected, check whether Moonshot AI offers a removal or opt-out process.
- Is a firewall block better than robots.txt for Moonshot AI?
- A firewall enforces the decision, while robots.txt asks politely. Many operators recommend robots.txt because blocking their IPs can stop them reading your rules at all. Use robots.txt first, and add a firewall rule only if requests continue.
A five-minute Moonshot AI review
- Confirm the token. Compare the user-agent in your logs with the tokens listed on this page. A close spelling is not the same crawler.
- Decide the outcome per crawler. Use the briefs above to choose allow, limit or block for each token.
- Write the group. Add or edit one
User-agentgroup per decision and repeat any shared rules inside it. - Publish and wait. Allow about a day for crawlers to fetch the new file.
- Confirm the result. Check your logs, then run the GPTBot and ClaudeBot access check to see the outcome from outside, including any firewall layer.
How to block or allow Moonshot AI in robots.txt
These rules cover all 3 crawlers Moonshot AI operates. Add them to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain.
Block Moonshot AI completely
User-agent: Kimi-User
User-agent: KimiBot
User-agent: Kimi-SearchBot
Disallow: /
Allow Moonshot AI explicitly
User-agent: Kimi-User
User-agent: KimiBot
User-agent: Kimi-SearchBot
Allow: /
These Moonshot AI rules ask; they do not enforce. If a Moonshot AI token ignores them, block it at the server or CDN. Paths are case-sensitive, and each rule matches the token, not the full user-agent string.
Frequently asked questions about Moonshot AI
What crawlers does Moonshot AI run?
Moonshot AI operates 3 crawlers in our directory: Kimi (Moonshot AI) (user-agent Kimi-User), Kimi Crawler (user-agent KimiBot), Kimi Search (user-agent Kimi-SearchBot).
Should I block Moonshot AI?
Generally safe to allow; provides legitimate crawling value. That guidance follows this operator's least reassuring crawler, Kimi Crawler, rated caution, because allowing an operator allows every crawler it runs. The SEO impact score for blocking is 2/10, where 10 means blocking costs you the most visibility.
How do I block Moonshot AI in robots.txt?
Add the following to robots.txt at your domain root: User-agent: Kimi-User then User-agent: KimiBot then User-agent: Kimi-SearchBot then Disallow: /. One Disallow line covers all 3 user-agent tokens.
Does blocking Moonshot AI hurt my search rankings?
Every crawler here carries the same blocking impact: Low - No SEO ranking impact. Google's own ranking crawler is Googlebot, which this operator does not run, so blocking Moonshot AI does not by itself remove you from Google's index. What it can change is whether AI assistants and analytics tools can read your pages.