Alibaba · Other AI bots
TongyiBot
Alibaba’s Tongyi assistant crawler. Allow it for Tongyi fetches; Qwen-User is the closer “live answer” twin.
- Operator
- Alibaba
- Traffic type
- Other AI bots
- Verification
- Not independently verifiable
- robots.txt
- Compliance not documented
Usually means: Link-preview, ads, and product fetchers. Allow them if you want unfurls and landing-page fetches to work; they are not the citation path.
User-agent
robots.txt and most WAF rules match the token, not the full Mozilla string. Operators often wrap TongyiBot in extra product or version text.
TongyiBot
What TongyiBot does
TongyiBot fetches pages for Alibaba’s Tongyi products. QwenBot is the broader collector; Qwen-User is user-triggered.
How to get discovered
Allow TongyiBot and Qwen-User rather than a single Alibaba token. Probe with the UA you actually see in logs.
Why TongyiBot might skip you
Generic Alibaba/Qwen Disallows, or challenge pages.
robots.txt rule
Allow this token on public pages you want retrieved or cited. A CDN “Block AI bots” toggle can still 403 it after robots.txt says Allow.
# Keep TongyiBot eligible to fetch this site
User-agent: TongyiBot
Allow: /Alibaba has not published a machine-readable range file for this token. Do not treat the user-agent alone as proof of identity.
JavaScript: reads raw HTML only.
Other Alibaba bots
Training, search, and user-fetch tokens from the same operator are not interchangeable. Allow the discovery path even when you opt out of training.
TongyiBot FAQ
What is TongyiBot?
TongyiBot fetches pages for Alibaba’s Tongyi products. QwenBot is the broader collector; Qwen-User is user-triggered.
Should I allow TongyiBot in robots.txt?
Yes if you want Alibaba to be able to fetch and cite this site. Blocking TongyiBot is how pages stay invisible to that product even when Googlebot still crawls them.
How do I know a request is really TongyiBot?
Alibaba has not published a range file for this token. Treat the user-agent as a claimed identity, and do not build a hard IP allowlist from blog posts or screenshots.
Letting TongyiBot in is the start. Getting cited is the job.
Rankealo checks whether AI crawlers can reach you, then publishes pages built to be retrieved and quoted in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini.
