Allow or block Applebot-Extended on Next.js: app/robots.js and a proxy rule

Return a rule with userAgent “Applebot-Extended” and disallow “/” from app/robots.js. Deploy for it to take effect.

This response

You are ClaudeBot (Anthropic). Citable recognised you as an AI agent, so this is https://getcitable.in/crawlers/applebot-extended/nextjs with the UI removed — the content only. A browser asking for the same address gets the full designed page.

Applebot-Extended, and where Next.js keeps the rule

Applebot-Extended is not a crawler. Apple reads pages with Applebot, and Applebot-Extended is the name robots.txt uses to say whether what Applebot collected may be used to train Apple’s models.

In the App Router, robots.txt is either a static file or the output of app/robots.js, a function that returns the rules.

Step by step

What to paste

A group that names a crawler replaces the * group for that crawler; it does not add to it. Paths the * group closes are open to a crawler with its own group unless they are repeated there.

app/robots.js, refusing Applebot-Extended:

export default function robots() {
  return {
    rules: [
      { userAgent: "Applebot-Extended", disallow: "/" },
      { userAgent: "*", allow: "/" },
    ],
  };
}

The same as a static robots.txt:

User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Disallow: /

What trips people up

app/robots.js is run at build time and its output is cached. Editing it changes nothing on the live site until the next deploy. If the site is on Vercel, the Firewall sits in front of all of it.

Asked, or actually refused?

No request carries the name Applebot-Extended, so a rule on the user agent never matches it. robots.txt is the only place this name has any effect.

Check it yourself

Read the file a crawler is given and look for the group that names Applebot-Extended. There is no request to test: Applebot-Extended never sends one.

The request:

curl -s https://your-site.example/robots.txt

Questions

How do I block Applebot-Extended on Next.js?

Return a rule with userAgent “Applebot-Extended” and disallow “/” from app/robots.js. Deploy for it to take effect.

How do I allow Applebot-Extended on Next.js?

A crawler that robots.txt does not name follows the * group, so Applebot-Extended needs no rule to be allowed. To allow it by name, add the Allow block.

Can Next.js actually stop Applebot-Extended, or only ask it?

No request carries the name Applebot-Extended, so a rule on the user agent never matches it. robots.txt is the only place this name has any effect.

Does a rule for Applebot-Extended affect Googlebot or my Google rankings?

Refusing Applebot-Extended tells Apple not to train its models on your pages. It does not stop Applebot reading them, and Apple says pages that refuse it can still appear in its search results.

Checked against Next.js's own documentation on 1 October 2026

Related

About Citable

Citable strips the UI from a website for AI agents and serves them only the content.

When an AI agent — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or any of the 81 that Citable recognises — opens a page, Citable removes the theme, scripts, navigation and layout and serves only the content: the same facts, at the same URL, on the site's own domain. People and Google still get the full designed page.

How it works: https://getcitable.in/how-it-works · Summary for AI agents: https://getcitable.in/llms.txt


Source: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/applebot-extended/nextjs · Citable · Run the free audit · llms.txt · getcitable@gmail.com