Safe Data Scrapers

Amazon Kendra

Operated by Amazon

Quick Facts

User-Agent:
Amazon Kendra
Category:
Data Scrapers
Operator:
Amazon
Safety:
Safe
Blocking Impact:
Low - No SEO ranking impact
SEO Impact Score:
2/10

What is Amazon Kendra?

Amazon Kendra is an intelligent enterprise search service powered by machine learning.

Amazon Kendra is an intelligent enterprise search service powered by machine learning. Amazon Kendra is a data aggregation crawler. Unlike search bots or AI crawlers, its purpose is typically to collect content for private datasets, price monitoring, or research. Blocking Amazon Kendra via robots.txt or at the server level has NO negative SEO impact. If you see excessive crawl volume from this bot in your logs, a hard block is recommended.

What happens if you block Amazon Kendra?

✅ **Minimal Impact** - Blocking Amazon Kendra has no meaningful effect on your search engine rankings or organic traffic.
Generally safe to allow; provides legitimate crawling value.

How to block Amazon Kendra with robots.txt

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

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

Yes, Amazon Kendra 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 Amazon Kendra 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 Amazon Kendra requests resolve to amazon's domain.

What does Amazon Kendra do?

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

  • Extracts content, prices, or data from websites
  • May be used for competitive intelligence
  • Often operates without explicit permission
  • Can increase server load and bandwidth usage
  • May violate terms of service or copyright

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the official user-agent string for Amazon Kendra?
The official user-agent string for Amazon Kendra is: Amazon Kendra. 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 Amazon Kendra by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP - legitimate bots resolve back to their operator's domain.
Is Amazon Kendra safe?
Yes, Amazon Kendra 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 Amazon Kendra 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 Amazon Kendra hurt my SEO?
✅ **Minimal Impact** - Blocking Amazon Kendra has no meaningful effect on your search engine rankings or organic traffic.
How do I block Amazon Kendra in robots.txt?
Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file: 
User-agent: Amazon Kendra
Disallow: /
This instructs Amazon Kendra 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 Amazon Kendra respect robots.txt?
Yes - Amazon Kendra 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 Amazon Kendra is crawling my site?
Search your web server access logs for the string Amazon Kendra (case-insensitive grep: grep -i "Amazon Kendra" /var/log/nginx/access.log). You can also check Google Search Console → Coverage → Crawl Stats for Googlebot variants. For Amazon Kendra specifically, filter by user-agent in your log analysis tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).
What is the crawl frequency of Amazon Kendra?
Amazon Kendra crawls at a moderate rate. If you notice excessive traffic in your logs, you can add a Crawl-delay directive: 
User-agent: Amazon Kendra
Crawl-delay: 10
(10 second delay between requests).
Can I block Amazon Kendra from specific pages only?
Yes. Instead of a global Disallow: / you can restrict Amazon Kendra to specific paths: 
User-agent: Amazon Kendra
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /staging/
Allow: /
This allows Amazon Kendra everywhere except the listed paths. Path matching in robots.txt uses prefix matching - Disallow: /private/ blocks /private/page.html but NOT /public/private/.
Is Amazon Kendra causing high server load?
If Amazon Kendra is generating excessive requests, you can: 1. Add Crawl-delay: 30 below the User-agent directive in robots.txt. 2. Rate-limit the user-agent via Nginx's limit_req_zone or Apache's mod_ratelimit. 3. Block it outright at Cloudflare WAF with rule: http.user_agent contains "Amazon Kendra". 4. Use fail2ban to auto-block IPs exceeding request thresholds.

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