PetalBot User Agent: What It Is & How to Block It

01 · Operator

Who operates PetalBot

Company: Huawei (Petal Search)
Type: Search engine crawler
Official docs: aspiegel.com

02 · Behavior

What PetalBot does

PetalBot crawls PC and mobile websites to build the Petal Search index. The index also powers content recommendations in Huawei Assistant and AI Search services. It adjusts crawl rate to server capacity, site quality and update frequency.

03 · Impact

Why PetalBot matters for your site

If you allow it

Your pages can appear in Petal Search
Content can surface in Huawei Assistant and AI Search

If you block it

Can produce high request volumes
Limited referral traffic for many sites
Removal from the index can take months after blocking

04 · Allow

How to allow PetalBot

robots.txt

User-agent: PetalBot
Allow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "PetalBot")
Action:     Skip › All Super Bot Fight Mode rules

# Also check Security › Bots: "Block AI bots" can block it regardless of robots.txt.

WordPress

# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: PetalBot
Allow: /

nginx

# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "PetalBot") { return 403; }

Apache

# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PetalBot [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]

05 · Block

How to block PetalBot

PetalBot follows robots.txt, so one rule is enough. Use a server or CDN rule only to stop spoofed copies.

robots.txt

User-agent: PetalBot
Disallow: /

Cloudflare

# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "PetalBot")
Action:     Block

WordPress

# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: PetalBot
Disallow: /

nginx

# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "PetalBot") {
    return 403;
}

Apache

# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PetalBot [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>

06 · User agents

User agents we see for PetalBot

The user agent published by the operator:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 7.0;) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; PetalBot;+https://webmaster.petalsearch.com/site/petalbot)

07 · Verification

Is it really PetalBot?

PetalBot’s operator publishes no IP ranges or hostnames, so requests cannot be verified. Treat the user agent as a claim, and watch your logs for unusual request rates.

FAQ

Questions about PetalBot

What is PetalBot?

PetalBot is the crawler of Huawei's Petal Search engine. It builds the index used by Petal Search and Huawei Assistant.

How do I block PetalBot?

Add User-agent: PetalBot and Disallow: / to robots.txt. The operator notes that clearing already indexed pages can take several months.

How do I verify PetalBot?

Run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP, check the domain, and confirm with a forward DNS lookup.

PetalBot is Huawei (Petal Search)’s search engine crawler