In short. Apple discloses five possible Search ranking signal classes, with no predetermined importance or public weighting.
Definition: Apple says its Search results may take five classes of signals into account: aggregated engagement with search results, relevance to search terms and webpage content, the number and quality of links, approximate user location, and webpage design. Apple publishes the list without assigning a predetermined importance to any factor.
Key facts
- Apple’s About Applebot documentation lists aggregated user engagement with search results as a possible factor.
- It describes relevance as matching search terms to webpage topics and content.
- It names the number and quality of links from other pages on the web.
- It includes user location based signals and qualifies the location data as approximate.
- It also lists webpage design characteristics, without defining a scoring formula.
What signals does Apple name?
Apple’s public list covers five different inputs. Engagement is aggregated from users’ interactions with search results. Relevance concerns the match between the words in a search and the webpage’s topics and content. Links are described by both their number and their quality, and the source of those links is other pages on the web. The remaining entries are approximate user location signals and webpage design characteristics.
The wording matters because Apple says Search results may use these factors “with no (pre-determined) importance of ranking.” The documentation therefore identifies signal classes without giving weights, thresholds, or a calculation for a page’s position.
How does location relate to Search?
Apple’s Search & Privacy documentation says that limited information can be sent to Apple to provide up-to-date suggestions when a person uses Search, Safari search, Spotlight, Look Up, Visual Look Up, or #images search in Messages. The information may include location, topics of interest, search queries, contextual information, selected suggestions, apps in use, and related device usage data.
That privacy description supplies context for Apple’s separate reference to user location based signals. Geographic weighting and the effect of a particular location on a result remain unspecified. Apple says the search-related information is used to process a request and to develop and improve search results, including by using search queries to fine-tune Search models.
What does page design change for a website?
Applebot is Apple’s web crawler. Apple says it may render a website within a browser, and that blocking JavaScript, CSS, or other required resources in robots.txt may prevent proper rendering. The documentation asks website owners to make everything needed for a user to render the page available to Applebot, or to make the site render cleanly when resources are unavailable.
The same page gives this robots.txt example:
User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /
Disallow: /private/
User-agent: *
Disallow: /not-allowed/
Applebot follows standard robots.txt directives in general search crawls targeted at Applebot. crawl-delay is ignored. The crawler adjusts its crawl rate when a site slows down or returns errors, and Apple says it caches crawled content to reduce unnecessary crawling.
Are Applebot controls ranking signals?
Applebot-Extended is a secondary user agent that gives publishers control over how Apple may use data already crawled by Applebot. Apple says Applebot-Extended does not crawl webpages and that its site rules are not considered in ranking for Search. A robots.txt rule for that user agent therefore controls data use rather than adding a disclosed ranking factor.
The five-factor list also leaves the measurement of engagement, link quality, design, relevance, and location unspecified. Apple’s page supplies the categories and the absence of predetermined importance, but no public ranking formula.
Related terms
FAQ
Does Apple publish the weight of each signal?
No. Apple says the factors may be used with no predetermined importance of ranking, and the page does not publish weights or thresholds.
Does blocking Applebot-Extended remove a page from Apple Search?
No. Apple says Applebot-Extended does not crawl webpages and that its rules are not considered in Search ranking. Applebot remains the crawler that handles search crawling and rendering.
Can location affect Apple Search results?
Apple lists approximate user location signals among the factors Search may consider. Its privacy documentation also says location may be included in limited information sent to Apple for up-to-date suggestions.
What should a website owner check?
Check that Applebot can access the JavaScript, CSS, and other resources required to render the page. Apple says blocked resources may prevent proper rendering and gives separate robots.txt directives for Applebot.
Sources
Check how a page reads to answer engines. Open the GEO score analyzer