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AspiegelBot

Operated by

Quick Facts

User-Agent:AspiegelBot
Category:Search Engines
Safety:Safe
Blocking Impact:Critical — Blocking removes you from search results
SEO Impact Score:10/10

What is AspiegelBot?

AspiegelBot is a web crawler associated with Huawei's Petal Search ecosystem, operating primarily from Ireland.

AspiegelBot is a web crawler associated with Huawei's Petal Search ecosystem, operating primarily from Ireland. AspiegelBot is a production-grade search engine crawler operated by . It uses a distributed crawl infrastructure that respects crawl-delay directives, follows RFC 9309 (robots.txt) spec, and processes Sitemaps to prioritise fresh content. The user-agent string AspiegelBot must be whitelisted if your site uses rate-limiting or WAF rules. Blocking impact is Critical — Blocking removes you from search results.

What happens if you block AspiegelBot?

⛔ **Critical Impact** — Blocking AspiegelBot will stop from crawling and indexing your pages. Within days or weeks you may see pages drop out of 's search index entirely, resulting in a significant loss of organic search traffic. This is the most severe possible SEO consequence. Only do this intentionally, for example if you are migrating to a different search engine or decommissioning a domain. If you accidentally blocked AspiegelBot, remove the rule immediately and request re-indexing via 's webmaster tools.
Never block — it will remove your site from major search results.

How to block AspiegelBot with robots.txt

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

Block completely (robots.txt)
User-agent: AspiegelBot Disallow: /
Allow all (robots.txt)
User-agent: AspiegelBot Allow: /
Block private only (robots.txt)
User-agent: AspiegelBot Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /api/ Disallow: /admin/ Allow: /
Nginx server block
# Nginx: Hard-block AspiegelBot if ($http_user_agent ~* "AspiegelBot") { return 403 "Bot blocked"; }
Apache .htaccess
# Apache: Hard-block AspiegelBot SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "AspiegelBot" 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 AspiegelBot safe to allow?

Yes, AspiegelBot is a **safe and legitimate** crawler. It is operated by , which publicly documents its crawler at an official URL and follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309). The user-agent string AspiegelBot 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 AspiegelBot requests resolve to 's domain.

What does AspiegelBot do?

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

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the official user-agent string for AspiegelBot?
The official user-agent string for AspiegelBot is: AspiegelBot. 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 AspiegelBot by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP — legitimate bots resolve back to their operator's domain.
Is AspiegelBot safe?
Yes, AspiegelBot is a **safe and legitimate** crawler. It is operated by , which publicly documents its crawler at an official URL and follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309). The user-agent string AspiegelBot 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).
Will blocking AspiegelBot hurt my SEO?
⛔ **Critical Impact** — Blocking AspiegelBot will stop from crawling and indexing your pages. Within days or weeks you may see pages drop out of 's search index entirely, resulting in a significant loss of organic search traffic. This is the most severe possible SEO consequence. Only do this intentionally, for example if you are migrating to a different search engine or decommissioning a domain. If you accidentally blocked AspiegelBot, remove the rule immediately and request re-indexing via 's webmaster tools.
How do I block AspiegelBot in robots.txt?
Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file:
User-agent: AspiegelBot
Disallow: /
This instructs AspiegelBot 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 AspiegelBot respect robots.txt?
Yes — AspiegelBot is a well-behaved bot operated by . It fetches and parses /robots.txt before crawling any page, following RFC 9309.
How do I verify if AspiegelBot is crawling my site?
Search your web server access logs for the string AspiegelBot (case-insensitive grep: grep -i "AspiegelBot" /var/log/nginx/access.log). You can also check Google Search Console → Coverage → Crawl Stats for Googlebot variants. For AspiegelBot specifically, filter by user-agent in your log analysis tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).
What is the crawl frequency of AspiegelBot?
Critical-impact search crawlers like AspiegelBot typically crawl popular pages daily and less popular pages weekly. You can manage crawl rate via the crawl-delay directive or via the search console.
Can I block AspiegelBot from specific pages only?
Yes. Instead of a global Disallow: / you can restrict AspiegelBot to specific paths:
User-agent: AspiegelBot
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /staging/
Allow: /
This allows AspiegelBot everywhere except the listed paths. Path matching in robots.txt uses prefix matching — Disallow: /private/ blocks /private/page.html but NOT /public/private/.
How do I check if AspiegelBot is blocked by my robots.txt?
Use Google's robots.txt Tester in Search Console, or a third-party checker to simulate a AspiegelBot request. You can also manually check by opening https://aicrawlercheck.com/robots.txt and scanning for AspiegelBot entries. If a block exists, immediately test it against your most important URLs using the Google Search Console URL Inspection tool.
My site is blocked by AspiegelBot in Search Console — what do I do?
1. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for any User-agent: AspiegelBot or User-agent: * Disallow rules covering your key pages. 2. Remove or restrict the blocking rules. 3. Validate via Google Search Console → robots.txt Tester. 4. Request re-indexing using the URL Inspection tool. 5. Wait 1-2 weeks for re-crawl. Monitor Coverage report for recovery.

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