What is iMessage?
iMessage is Apple's fetcher that retrieves web page metadata to generate link previews for URLs shared in the Messages app. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when iMessage visits your website.
Category
| Example User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_1) AppleWebKit/601.2.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/9.0.1 Safari/601.2.4 facebookexternalhit/1.1 Facebot Twitterbot/1.0 |
| Operated By | Apple |
| Source | Official Website |
| Triggered By | Shared link |
| Used for AI Model Training | Not expected |
| Affects AI Chat & Search Visibility | Not directly |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | No |
Why Is iMessage Visiting My Website?
Someone shared a link to your page. iMessage fetched it to build a preview card, and each new share may trigger another request. A spike often means your content is circulating more widely.
Should I Block iMessage?
Usually not. Blocking iMessage may leave shared links without a title or image, making them less inviting to click. If it begins fetching at unexpected volume, try rate limiting before blocking it outright. For context, 7% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for iMessage.
Insights for iMessage
As of November 9, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Compliance
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Frequently Asked Questions
What Traffic Patterns Should I Expect From iMessage?
iMessage usually makes a single request within seconds of a URL being shared, without crawling further. Traffic rises and falls with sharing activity, so a widely circulated link can produce a sharp burst of fetches.
Does iMessage Follow Robots.txt Rules?
No. iMessage is not expected to follow robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule only communicates your preference. Use Bad Bot Blocking to reject its requests, then use Agent Analytics to verify that they stop.
Is iMessage Used for AI Model Training?
Not ordinarily. iMessage is not categorized as an AI training scraper or data provider, so AI model training is not its expected purpose.
Does Blocking iMessage Affect AI Search or Citations?
Not directly. iMessage's expected purpose is not to supply an AI search index or retrieve pages for AI-generated answers.
Does iMessage Access Private Content?
No. iMessage has no credentials and should access only the public URL and assets needed for a preview. It does not continue through the rest of your site.
How Can I Verify a Request From iMessage?
Agent Analytics tracks iMessage visits in real time. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "iMessage". Look for a page and its preview assets being requested without follow-up navigation. Because iMessage does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.
How Is iMessage Different From Other Apple Agents?
Apple operates separate agents for different purposes, so each agent should be evaluated and controlled independently.
- Applebot-Extended: Applebot-Extended is an Apple robots.txt control token that lets publishers opt out of using Applebot-crawled content to train Apple foundation models. It does not crawl …
- Applebot: Applebot is Apple's web crawler that gathers data to power search features across Apple's ecosystem including Spotlight, Siri, and Safari search functionality.
- AASA-Bot: AASA-Bot is Apple's crawler that fetches Apple App Site Association files to support Universal Links functionality, allowing iOS apps to handle specific URL patterns.