Kimi-SearchBot
Kimi-SearchBot is the search crawler operated by Moonshot AI, the Chinese company behind Kimi, a fast-growing AI assistant. It visits public web pages, assesses their relevance, and adds them to the index Kimi draws on when users perform searches. Moonshot AI's own documentation is explicit: blocking this bot prevents your site from appearing in Kimi's search results, which can limit your reach among users looking for products or services like yours.
- User-agent
Kimi-SearchBotKimi-SearchBot/1.0- Does it respect robots.txt?
- Yes
- Official documentation
- https://www.kimi.com/policies/kimi-crawlers
How to allow it in your robots.txt
User-agent: Kimi-SearchBot
Allow: /How to block it (not recommended)
User-agent: Kimi-SearchBot
Disallow: /Frequently asked questions
Should I block Kimi-SearchBot?
Not if you want your business to appear in Kimi. Moonshot AI states this clearly in their official documentation: blocking Kimi-SearchBot means your site won't show up in Kimi's search results. If your potential customers use this assistant, you want the bot to be able to crawl your content.
How does Kimi-SearchBot affect my visibility on Kimi?
Directly. Kimi-SearchBot is what builds the search index — it decides which pages are included and how relevant they are. If your site is well-structured and accessible, Kimi can surface it when someone searches for what you offer. Block the bot, and you don't appear at all.
How do I know if Kimi-SearchBot is visiting my site?
Search for "Kimi-SearchBot" in your server logs or your CDN dashboard — Cloudflare is a common option. Every visit is recorded with that name in the user-agent field, along with the date and the page requested.