Amazonbot: what it is, what it does with your content, and what blocking it costs
What Amazonbot is
Amazonbot builds the retrieval index that Amazon answers from. This is the category that decides whether you can be cited right now: when someone asks a question and the assistant goes looking for sources, it searches an index this crawler built. Blocking it removes you from those answers.
Operator: Amazon
robots.txt token: Amazonbot
User-agent on the wire: not published by the operator
Category: Live retrieval / search index
What blocking it actually costs
Removes you from the corpus behind Alexa answers and Amazon's shopping assistants.
How to block Amazonbot
Add this to your robots.txt:
User-agent: Amazonbot
Disallow: /
The token must appear on its own User-agent: line. A named group replaces the User-agent: * group rather than adding to it, so anything you also want disallowed for this crawler has to be repeated inside its group.
How to allow Amazonbot
User-agent: Amazonbot
Allow: /
An explicit allow is worth writing even when you have no blanket block: it documents the decision, and it survives someone later adding a restrictive User-agent: * rule without thinking about AI crawlers.
robots.txt is not the only thing that can block it
A permissive robots.txt does not mean Amazonbot can reach you. WAF rules, Cloudflare's bot-management settings, rate limits and country blocks all sit in front of robots.txt and answer first. A site whose robots.txt welcomes Amazonbot and whose edge returns 403 to it is blocked in every way that matters — and nothing in robots.txt will tell you so.
This is the gap the AI Crawler Access Checker was built to close: it reads robots.txt and sends a real request carrying the crawler's user-agent, so you see what the crawler sees.
Official documentation
Amazon documents Amazonbot at https://developer.amazon.com/amazonbot.
Common questions
- What user-agent does Amazonbot send?
Amazon does not publish an exact user-agent string for Amazonbot. Match on the
Amazonbottoken in robots.txt rather than on a full string you found elsewhere.- How do I block Amazonbot?
Add a group to robots.txt naming the token exactly:
User-agent: Amazonbot Disallow: /The group must name
Amazonboton its own line. AUser-agent: *group does not combine with a named one — under RFC 9309 the most specific matching group replaces the wildcard entirely, it does not inherit from it.- What does blocking Amazonbot cost me?
Removes you from the corpus behind Alexa answers and Amazon's shopping assistants.
- Can I tell a real Amazonbot request from a fake one?
Not reliably. Amazon does not publish verified IP ranges for Amazonbot, so the user-agent string is the only signal, and anyone can send it. Treat robots.txt as a statement of policy rather than as enforcement.
Is Amazonbot blocked on your site right now?
Reading your own robots.txt only answers half of it — a firewall rule can block Amazonbot while robots.txt says it is welcome. The checker tests both.
Check your site free