Safe Cloud Services

Amazonbot

Operated by Amazon

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

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
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">
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

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?
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).
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.
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/.

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