Siri now answers questions using its own web index. Can it find your business?
On 14 September 2026, Apple released iOS 27 and with it a rebuilt Siri that answers questions in conversation and, according to Prompt Marketing, cites its sources with every answer. For a small business, the interesting part is not the new Siri voice. It is that a huge number of iPhones now have an assistant that goes looking for answers about local businesses, opening hours and prices, and it does that using Apple's own crawler, not Google's.
What actually changed
Apple released iOS 27 with the usual long list of features (Safari tab tools, faster AirDrop and more). The part that matters here is the new Siri AI. Prompt Marketing explains that it pulls answers from an Apple-run web index built by Applebot, blends Apple's own models with Google Gemini outputs, and shows the sources it relied on. Eastern Herald reported that harder questions get routed to a custom version of Gemini.
There are limits worth knowing about. The full experience needs an iPhone 15 Pro or newer, and it launched in English with more languages expected in October. Morgan Stanley's estimate, quoted by Prompt Marketing, is that around 850 million of the 1.3 billion iPhones in use cannot run it. Coverage also suggests some regions may be restricted, and none of the coverage we found confirmed exactly how it is rolling out in the UK, so treat UK availability as something to watch rather than assume.
Why this matters even if few of your customers have one yet
Plenty of your customers do carry a recent iPhone, and the people asking Siri things like "who is a good plumber near me" are exactly the ones close to buying. Prompt Marketing expects Siri to be strongest on local, factual questions such as opening times, directions and pricing, and weaker for complicated shopping comparisons. That is the territory small local businesses live in.
It also adds to a pattern we have covered before. AI assistants are becoming a filter that decides which businesses get mentioned before anyone visits a website. If you want the wider picture, our post on holiday shoppers already asking AI where to buy walks through it.
What this means for your business
The good news is that none of this needs a new strategy. It needs your existing website to be easy for another crawler to read. Here is a short checklist.
Check that Applebot is allowed in. Applebot is Apple's crawler. It follows the rules in your site's robots.txt file, which is a small text file that tells crawlers what they may visit. Some security plugins and hosting settings block unfamiliar crawlers by default, so it is worth confirming yours is not shutting Apple out by accident.
Understand Applebot-Extended. Apple's support page describes this as a separate setting that controls whether your content can be used to train Apple's general AI models. Blocking it still leaves your pages eligible to appear in Apple's search features. It only opts you out of training. That is a business decision, and there is no single right answer.
Make the basics obvious in plain text. Opening hours, address, phone number, services and prices should be written on the page as real text, not locked inside an image or a PDF. An assistant can only quote what it can read.
Do not hide your content from snippets. Tags such as nosnippet tell search systems not to show excerpts of your page. If those are set sitewide, assistants may skip you.
Keep your site fast and secure. Crawlers give up on slow or broken pages like people do. This is also a good moment to make sure your site software is current, as we covered in our WordPress security update.
Don't panic about the click numbers
Prompt Marketing points to SparkToro data showing 68% of Google searches already end without a click. Assistants that answer directly will probably nudge that figure higher over time. The practical response is not to chase every new assistant. It is to make sure that when your business is mentioned, the answer is accurate and your website is the place people land to take the next step.
FAQ
Does Siri AI work like Google?
Not exactly. According to the coverage, it answers in conversation using Apple's own web index, and it shows the sources behind each answer. Google Search still works the way it did.
Should I block Applebot?
For most small businesses wanting to be found, no. Blocking it could make you harder to find in Siri, Spotlight and Safari. Blocking only Applebot-Extended is the narrower option if you do not want your content used for AI training.
How do I know if my site is blocking crawlers?
Open your own website address with /robots.txt on the end, for example yourwebsite.co.uk/robots.txt, and look for lines that mention Applebot or block all crawlers. If that file looks unfamiliar, your web designer or host can check it in a few minutes.
Do I need a new website for this?
Almost certainly not. A clear, fast site with the key facts written as text is already most of the way there.
If you would like a second pair of eyes
You are busy running your business, and keeping up with which crawler or assistant matters this month is not your job. If this has made you wonder how your own website would look to Siri, our SEO and GEO services cover exactly these checks. And if your site is overdue a refresh, our free website offer is an easy first step: we design it first and you only pay if you approve it. You can also see what we build on our website design and development page, or contact us and we will take a look.
Sources: Apple Newsroom (14 Sept 2026), Apple Support (Applebot), Prompt Marketing, Eastern Herald, Geeky Gadgets.
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