What is Amazonbot?
Amazonbot · Amazon · Search index crawler
Amazonbot is Amazon's crawler. It builds the index an AI answer engine retrieves and cites from. Feeds Alexa and Amazon answer surfaces.
What it does
Amazonbot builds the index that answers are retrieved from. Feeds Alexa and Amazon answer surfaces.
It does not execute JavaScript. Whatever your server returns in the initial HTML response is the entire page as far as Amazonbot is concerned — if your content is rendered client-side, this crawler reads an empty container.
Should you block Amazonbot?
Only if you want out of Amazon's AI answers. Amazonbot builds the index an AI answer engine retrieves and cites from, so blocking it means your pages stop being available as a source there.
You are excluded from Amazon's answer and assistant surfaces, including Alexa responses that draw on web content. For most sites this is a smaller audience than the OpenAI and Anthropic surfaces, but for consumer product and recipe content it is not.
To allow it
User-agent: Amazonbot
Allow: /To block it
User-agent: Amazonbot
Disallow: /Put the rule in your robots.txt at the site root. A group that names Amazonbot explicitly takes precedence over your User-agent: * group, so naming it is how you make your intent survive later edits to the wildcard rules.
Verifying a real Amazonbot request
Amazon documents reverse-DNS verification for Amazonbot: the source IP should resolve to an Amazon-controlled hostname, and the forward lookup of that hostname should return the same IP.
The mistake people make
Confusing Amazonbot with the various Amazon advertising and affiliate crawlers, which are separate user agents with separate purposes and separate robots.txt handling.
Frequently asked questions
- What is Amazonbot?
- Amazonbot is Amazon's crawler. It builds the index an AI answer engine retrieves and cites from. Feeds Alexa and Amazon answer surfaces.
- Should I block Amazonbot?
- Only if you want out of Amazon's AI answers. Amazonbot builds the index an AI answer engine retrieves and cites from, so blocking it means your pages stop being available as a source there.
- How do I block Amazonbot in robots.txt?
- Add a group to the robots.txt at your site root: "User-agent: Amazonbot" followed by "Disallow: /". Use "Allow: /" instead to allow it explicitly.
Further reading
- The Complete Guide to robots.txt for AI Crawlers: Which Bots to Allow
GPTBot vs OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot vs Claude-User, Googlebot vs Google-Extended: which AI crawlers to allow, which to block, and copy-ready robots.txt templates.
- How to Create and Optimize an llms.txt File for Your Website
The llms.txt format, where the file goes, how to keep it token-efficient, working examples for Next.js and static sites, and an honest account of who uses it.
- What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)? The Complete 2026 Guide
How ChatGPT Search, Perplexity and Claude find, read and cite pages, why that differs from Googlebot, and what the research says actually improves AI visibility.
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