PetalBot
Huawei (Petal Search) · AI search · robots.txt: Yes
Petal Search's crawler: it indexes PC and mobile sites for Petal Search and for content recommendations in Huawei Assistant and AI Search services.
Block PetalBot
User-agent: PetalBot
Disallow: /Huawei says banning PetalBot makes your pages unsearchable in Petal Search and every search service it powers, and that pages already indexed can take several months to disappear.
This token also decides Petal Search. The robots.txt generator leaves it to the rest of your file unless you choose Allow or Block for it by name.
Allow PetalBot
User-agent: PetalBot
Allow: /An allow group only changes anything if a broader rule would block PetalBot. Under the robots.txt standard (RFC 9309, section 2.2.1) a crawler follows the group that names it and uses the User-agent: * group only when no group does — so this group lets it in even if your * group says Disallow: /. Token matching is case-insensitive.
Put these lines in /robots.txt at the root of each host (each subdomain has its own file). robots.txt is a request to well-behaved crawlers, not access control.
Already have a robots.txt? Paste it into the robots.txt checker to see whether it blocks PetalBot on a given path, and which line decides.
Facts
- Operator
- Huawei (Petal Search)
- Purpose
- AI search index
Huawei says the index PetalBot builds serves Petal Search and also content recommendations in Huawei Assistant and AI Search services, all powered by the Petal Search engine.
- Obeys robots.txt
- Yes. Huawei says PetalBot complies with robots.txt, for the whole site or for single files, and that pages already indexed can take several months to clear after you block it.
- In your server logs
- The user-agent string contains "compatible;PetalBot;" (desktop) or "compatible; PetalBot;" (mobile).
- How to verify it
- Huawei says to run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP and check the host name is in aspiegel.com (in the form petalbot.*.aspiegel.com), then a forward lookup on that name must return the same IP. Huawei also offers a Verify PetalBot tool; it publishes no IP list.
What Huawei (Petal Search) says
Quoted word for word from the operator's documentation.
“PetalBot is an automatic program of the Petal search engine. The function of PetalBot is to access both PC and mobile websites and establish an index database which enables users to search the content of your site in Petal search engine and present content recommendations for the user in Huawei Assistant and AI Search services, both services are powered by Petal Search enigine.”
“PetalBot complies with the Internet robots protocol. You can use the robots.txt file to completely prevent PetalBot from accessing your website, or to prevent PetalBot from accessing some files on your website.”
“Note: Banning PetalBot from accessing your site will make the pages on your site and all search engine services provided by Petal unsearchable in the Petal search engine.”
“Although PetalBot has stopped accessing the pages on your site, it may take several months to clear the page index information that has already been established in the Petal search engine database.”
“Mozilla/5.0 (compatible;PetalBot;+”
“PetalBot’s hostname is in the format petalbot.*.aspiegel.com, and it is impersonated if it is not petalbot.*.aspiegel.com.”
“2. Verify that the domain name is in aspiegel.com.”
“3. Run a forward DNS lookup on the domain name retrieved in step 1 using the host command on the retrieved domain name. Verify that it is the same as the original accessing IP address from your logs.”
Sources
- Petal Search Webmaster: PetalBot — fetched and checked 2026-09-24