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PETALBOT

LOW RISK🔍 SEARCH & AI CRAWLER

Huawei's web crawler for Petal Search — Huawei's search engine for HarmonyOS devices

ORGANIZATION
Huawei
FIRST SEEN
2020-01
RESPECTS ROBOTS.TXT
✓ YES
DOCUMENTATION
webmaster.petalsearch.com
—
DAILY VISITS
—
COUNTRIES ACTIVE
TRACKING
STATUS
—
LAST SEEN

📡 PETALBOT USER-AGENT STRING

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; PetalBot;+https://webmaster.petalsearch.com/site/petalbot)

This is the User-Agent header sent by PetalBot in HTTP requests. Use this to identify PetalBot in your server access logs.

📋 ABOUT PETALBOT

PetalBot is the web crawler for Petal Search, Huawei's search engine designed to serve the hundreds of millions of Huawei devices that operate without Google services due to US trade restrictions. Petal Search is the default search engine on HarmonyOS devices and Huawei phones using Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) instead of Google Mobile Services.

PetalBot crawls the web globally to build Petal Search's index, with particular importance for markets where Huawei devices have significant market share — including China, Southeast Asia, Europe, and parts of the Middle East. The crawler respects robots.txt and provides webmaster tools for site operators to manage their presence in Petal Search results.

NORAD.io monitors PetalBot as part of its search engine crawler tracking. With Huawei shipping over 200 million devices annually and HarmonyOS growing as an alternative mobile platform, PetalBot indexing is relevant for reaching audiences on the Huawei ecosystem.

🎯 HOW TO DETECT PETALBOT

  • ▸User-Agent contains 'PetalBot'
  • ▸Crawls from Huawei Cloud IP ranges (114.119.x.x, 159.138.x.x)
  • ▸Verify via reverse DNS to *.petalsearch.com
  • ▸Moderate crawl volumes — lower than Googlebot or Bingbot
  • ▸Important for Huawei/HarmonyOS device visibility

🌐 PETALBOT KNOWN IP RANGES

114.119.128.0/18159.138.0.0/16

Use these CIDR ranges to verify PetalBot identity at the network level. Always combine with User-Agent verification for accurate detection.

🔄 CRAWL BEHAVIOR

Moderate crawl rates. Respects robots.txt. Crawls globally to build Petal Search's web index. Does not execute JavaScript. Can be managed via Petal Search Webmaster tools.

PURPOSE

Indexes web content for Petal Search, Huawei's search engine used on HarmonyOS and Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) devices. Serves as the default search engine on Huawei devices that lack Google services.

🤖 ROBOTS.TXT CONFIGURATION

User-agent: PetalBot
Allow: /

# To block:
# User-agent: PetalBot
# Disallow: /

PetalBot respects robots.txt directives. Add this to your robots.txt file at the root of your domain.

→ Complete Guide: robots.txt for AI Bots

🗺️ WHERE IS PETALBOT ACTIVE?

🇺🇸
United States
🇨🇦
Canada
🇲🇽
Mexico
🇬🇹
Guatemala
🇨🇺
Cuba
🇭🇹
Haiti
🇩🇴
Dominican Republic
🇭🇳
Honduras
🇳🇮
Nicaragua
🇸🇻
El Salvador
🇨🇷
Costa Rica
🇵🇦
Panama

⚠️ RELATED THREATS

Prompt Injection

Attempts to override bot instructions via malicious content embedded in web pages

Data Exfiltration

Bots attempting to extract sensitive data from websites including PII and credentials

Credential Stuffing

Automated login attempts using leaked credentials from data breaches

Aggressive Content Scraping

Bots aggressively scraping content beyond robots.txt limits and ToS

📂 MORE 🔍 SEARCH & AI CRAWLERS

GPTBotOpenAIClaudeBotAnthropicGooglebotGoogleGoogle-ExtendedGoogleBingbotMicrosoftBytespiderByteDance

📚 RELATED GUIDES

How to Detect AI Bots →robots.txt for AI Bots →NORAD API Docs →

PROTECT YOUR WEBSITE

Deploy SiteTrust to monitor and control AI bot access to your site with the Agent Passport Standard.

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