PetalBot
Huawei's search crawler, operated by its Aspiegel subsidiary - which is why it verifies under aspiegel.com.
Reference reviewed by Sona
| Operator | Huawei (Aspiegel) |
|---|---|
| Powers | Petal Search and Huawei Assistant AI answers |
| Purpose | Search & answers |
| User-agent token | PetalBot |
| Respects robots.txt | Yes |
PetalBot indexes desktop and mobile sites to build the Petal Search index, which backs search on Huawei devices and feeds AI-powered recommendations in Huawei Assistant. Petal Search is the default search engine across Huawei's device ecosystem, which is substantial in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Asia even though it is nearly invisible in the US.
The operating entity trips people up. PetalBot is run by Aspiegel, a Huawei subsidiary, and legitimate traffic reverse-resolves under aspiegel.com rather than anything Huawei-branded. Administrators who look up an unfamiliar hostname, find a company they have never heard of, and block it are a recurring pattern - the AspiegelBot name that appeared in older logs is the same operation.
Huawei documents that PetalBot complies with the robots exclusion protocol and provides a webmaster portal at webmaster.petalsearch.com. Of the Chinese-operated crawlers in this directory it has by far the best documentation and the only real verification story.
Note that it sends a mobile Android user-agent by default, so in analytics it can read as mobile traffic rather than as a crawler if you are matching on platform rather than on the PetalBot token.
How PetalBot behaves
- Sends a mobile Android user-agent by default, so platform-based analytics can misfile it as human mobile traffic.
- Verifies under aspiegel.com - a Huawei subsidiary, not a Huawei-branded domain.
- Formerly appeared as AspiegelBot in older logs; same operation.
- Documented as complying with the robots exclusion protocol, with a webmaster portal for site owners.
Full user-agent string
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)
Allow PetalBot
Visibility across Huawei's device ecosystem and its AI answer surfaces, which matter in many markets outside the US.
User-agent: PetalBot Allow: /
Block PetalBot
Huawei's ecosystem isn't a relevant audience for you and you would rather not spend the crawl bandwidth.
User-agent: PetalBot Disallow: /
How to verify PetalBot
Reverse DNS + published IP ranges
Reverse DNS is the documented check, and the surprise is the domain: genuine PetalBot traffic resolves under aspiegel.com, the Huawei subsidiary that operates the crawler, rather than under anything Huawei-branded. Confirm with a forward lookup back to the original IP. Older documentation and logs also reference petalsearch.com, so accept either suffix.
Documented reverse-DNS suffixes: .aspiegel.com, .petalsearch.com
Commonly confused with PetalBot
PetalBot FAQs
Why does PetalBot resolve to aspiegel.com and not Huawei?
Aspiegel is the Huawei subsidiary that operates PetalBot, and it is the documented reverse-DNS domain for genuine traffic. Seeing an unfamiliar company name here is expected, not a sign of spoofing.
Is PetalBot the same as AspiegelBot?
Effectively yes - AspiegelBot is the older identifier for the same crawling operation, which is why the aspiegel.com domain still appears in verification.
Should I allow PetalBot?
It depends on your markets. Petal Search is the default on Huawei devices, which have meaningful share across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Asia. If none of those matter to you, the visibility is worth little.
Why does PetalBot look like mobile traffic in my analytics?
Its default user-agent is a mobile Android string with the PetalBot identifier appended. Matching on platform rather than on the PetalBot token will bucket it as a human mobile visit.
Can PetalBot read your page right now?
Test any URL and see exactly what AI crawlers receive.