TongyiBot: what it is, who runs it, and how to allow or block it

TongyiBot is a crawler run by Alibaba. It reads pages at the moment a person asks a question, to answer it. Its name in robots.txt, how it shows up in server logs, whether its identity can be checked, and how to allow or refuse it on each platform.

This response

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

What TongyiBot is

TongyiBot is a crawler run by Alibaba. It reads pages at the moment a person asks a question, to answer it.

Should you refuse it?

TongyiBot fetches a page because a person asked about it. Refusing it means the answer that person gets is written without your page.

robots.txt is a request. A crawler that honours it stays out; nothing in the file stops one that does not. What is enforced is what the server or the edge in front of it refuses.

Is a request really TongyiBot?

Citable holds no published address list for Alibaba, so a read that claims to be TongyiBot is recorded as unknown rather than verified. A user agent is a claim, and anyone can send it.

Allowing or refusing TongyiBot in robots.txt

Add a group under its name, “User-agent: TongyiBot”. “Allow: /” lets it read the site and “Disallow: /” refuses it.

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.

Refuse TongyiBot:

User-agent: TongyiBot
Disallow: /

Allow TongyiBot:

User-agent: TongyiBot
Allow: /

Where the rule for TongyiBot goes, platform by platform

Questions

What is TongyiBot?

TongyiBot is a crawler run by Alibaba. It reads pages at the moment a person asks a question, to answer it.

Who runs TongyiBot?

Alibaba. It is the only name Citable recognises for Alibaba.

How do I allow or block TongyiBot in robots.txt?

Add a group under its name, “User-agent: TongyiBot”. “Allow: /” lets it read the site and “Disallow: /” refuses it. 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.

Should I block TongyiBot?

TongyiBot fetches a page because a person asked about it. Refusing it means the answer that person gets is written without your page.

How do I see TongyiBot in my server logs?

In an access log TongyiBot appears as a user agent containing “TongyiBot”.

How do I know a request is really TongyiBot?

Citable holds no published address list for Alibaba, so a read that claims to be TongyiBot is recorded as unknown rather than verified. A user agent is a claim, and anyone can send it.

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/tongyibot · Citable · Run the free audit · llms.txt · getcitable@gmail.com