Kimi-SearchBot: what this bot is and how to allow or block it
Kimi-SearchBot is a search bot from Moonshot AI: it finds and reads pages so that Kimi can find your site and cite it in answers. Block it and your site drops out of those answers.
Kimi-SearchBot User-Agent
This is how Kimi-SearchBot identifies itself in requests to your site. In robots.txt you only write the token — Kimi-SearchBot.
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; Kimi-SearchBot/1.0; +https://www.kimi.com/policies/kimi-crawlers
How to allow Kimi-SearchBot
Add this group to robots.txt at the site root. Close service sections in the same group: a bot with its own group does not read the «User-agent: *» rules.
User-agent: Kimi-SearchBot Allow: /
robots.txt is not everything. If your site uses Cloudflare or other bot protection, it may serve Kimi-SearchBot a 403 error or a challenge page even when robots.txt allows everything.
How to block Kimi-SearchBot
To block the whole site, add the group below to robots.txt. The rule works for bots that respect robots.txt.
User-agent: Kimi-SearchBot Disallow: /
What happens if you block Kimi-SearchBot
Kimi will stop finding and reading your pages: your site will not appear in answers with search, and the assistant will not link to it.
How to check whether Kimi-SearchBot visits your site
Search the web server logs for the token. The User-Agent string is easy to fake, so to be sure, check the IP address against the ranges if Moonshot AI publishes them.
grep "Kimi-SearchBot" /var/log/nginx/access.log
Does your site let Kimi-SearchBot in
Free 15-second check: we read your robots.txt and request your site as AI bots — you see which ones the server and bot protection let in and which they block.
Questions and answers
Should I block Kimi-SearchBot?
No, if you want Kimi to find and recommend your site. Blocking search bots only makes sense for pages that should not appear in answers.
How do I know whether Kimi-SearchBot visits my site?
Search the web server logs for the token. The User-Agent string is easy to fake, so to be sure, check the IP address against the ranges if Moonshot AI publishes them.
Is it enough to allow Kimi-SearchBot in robots.txt?
robots.txt is not everything. If your site uses Cloudflare or other bot protection, it may serve Kimi-SearchBot a 403 error or a challenge page even when robots.txt allows everything.