In short. PetalBot builds Petal Search's web index, follows published robots.txt controls and has a reverse and forward DNS verification procedure.

Definition: PetalBot is Huawei's web crawler for Petal Search. As of 17 October 2026, Huawei describes it as building an index from PC and mobile websites for search and content recommendations in Huawei Assistant and AI Search.

Key facts

Huawei's PetalBot documentation publishes PetalBot as the crawler identifier for both PC and mobile requests.
Huawei's Verify PetalBot tool accepts an IP address to check whether it belongs to PetalBot.
The IETF's Robots Exclusion Protocol, RFC 9309 places crawler rules in /robots.txt at the top-level path of a service.

How does PetalBot identify itself?

A user-agent is the software identifier sent with a web request. Huawei's user-agent table gives this full string for the PC crawler:

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

The same table lists a mobile string containing Android and Mobile Safari identifiers. Both variants contain PetalBot, which is also the name used in Huawei's published crawling rules. A website administrator can compare the User-Agent field in requests with these published identifiers, then apply the address verification procedure below.

How is access controlled?

A robots.txt file publishes instructions about which paths a crawler may request. Huawei's access-control instructions state that PetalBot follows the robots protocol and give this full-site exclusion:

User-agent: PetalBot
Disallow: /

The User-agent line selects PetalBot; Disallow: / excludes crawling across the site. Huawei also publishes a separate example for allowing and excluding particular paths:

User-agent: PetalBot
Allow: /w/api/
Disallow: /trap/

Here, /w/api/ is explicitly allowed and /trap/ is excluded. Under the rules in RFC 9309, paths without a matching restriction remain allowed. The example therefore leaves other paths open to crawling.

Huawei warns that blocking PetalBot makes the site's pages unsearchable through Petal's search services. The RFC also explains that paths listed in robots.txt are public and recommends application security measures, such as HTTP authentication, for protecting content.

How are PetalBot requests verified?

Huawei's verification procedure uses the requesting IP address recorded in server logs. DNS, the Domain Name System, supplies the address and hostname lookups used in this check.

The procedure starts with a reverse DNS lookup, which obtains a hostname from the IP address using the host command. The hostname must belong to petalsearch.com. A forward DNS lookup then resolves that hostname back to an IP address, which must match the original requesting address in the logs. The published procedure checks both the domain name and the returned address.

FAQ

Why do my pages remain in Petal Search after I block crawling?

Huawei's index-update explanation says clearing existing page index information can take several months after PetalBot stops accessing your pages. It also advises checking your robots configuration and sending urgent exclusion requests to petalbot@huawei.com.

Where can I report excessive PetalBot crawling?

The same documentation names petalbot@huawei.com for concerns about unreasonable crawling. Huawei says it adjusts crawling according to factors including server capacity and website updates.

Sources

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