What is TongyiBot?
TongyiBot is a web crawler operated by Alibaba that fetches web content for the Tongyi Qianwen assistant and related Qwen-generated answers. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Alibaba |
| Source | Official Website |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
| Insights Last Updated | August 11, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
TongyiBot makes isolated, on-demand requests rather than crawling your site. Traffic follows user demand, ranging from sporadic fetches to steady visits for a popular assistant.
How To Block TongyiBot With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block TongyiBot from accessing your entire website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all AI assistants at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: TongyiBot # https://knownagents.com/agents/tongyibot
Disallow: /Global Statistics for TongyiBot
As of August 11, 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 Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocking Trend
1% of top websites block TongyiBot in their robots.txt files.
Overall AI Assistant Traffic
0.7% of all web traffic came from AI assistants.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block TongyiBot?
Usually not. Blocking TongyiBot can keep your pages out of AI-generated answers and eliminate potential citation traffic. It does not improve traditional search rankings. For context, 1% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for TongyiBot.
Does TongyiBot Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Yes. TongyiBot is expected to follow robots.txt directives, so a disallow rule is the appropriate first step. Automatic Robots.txt can add and maintain that rule, while Agent Analytics lets you verify whether TongyiBot respects it.
Does TongyiBot Access Private Content?
Not ordinarily. TongyiBot fetches pages as an anonymous visitor without a stored login. Content protected by a paywall or login remains out of reach.
Why Is TongyiBot Visiting My Website?
A user asked Alibaba's assistant a question your page could help answer. TongyiBot retrieved the page to support its response, often with a citation linking back to your site.
How Can I Tell if TongyiBot Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks TongyiBot visits in real time alongside every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "TongyiBot". Look for a single-page request with no follow-up navigation. Because TongyiBot does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.