diff --git a/docs/topics/broad-crawls.rst b/docs/topics/broad-crawls.rst
index 0286c3354..248e38b61 100644
--- a/docs/topics/broad-crawls.rst
+++ b/docs/topics/broad-crawls.rst
@@ -182,30 +182,6 @@ To disable redirects use:
 
     REDIRECT_ENABLED = False
 
-Enable crawling of "Ajax Crawlable Pages"
-=========================================
-
-Some pages (up to 1%, based on empirical data from year 2013) declare
-themselves as ajax crawlable. This means they provide plain HTML
-version of content that is usually available only via AJAX.
-Pages can indicate it in two ways:
-
-1) by using ``#!`` in URL - this is the default way;
-2) by using a special meta tag - this way is used on
-   "main", "index" website pages.
-
-Scrapy handles (1) automatically; to handle (2) enable
-:ref:`AjaxCrawlMiddleware <ajaxcrawl-middleware>`:
-
-.. code-block:: python
-
-    AJAXCRAWL_ENABLED = True
-
-When doing broad crawls it's common to crawl a lot of "index" web pages;
-AjaxCrawlMiddleware helps to crawl them correctly.
-It is turned OFF by default because it has some performance overhead,
-and enabling it for focused crawls doesn't make much sense.
-
 .. _broad-crawls-bfo:
 
 Crawl in BFO order
diff --git a/docs/topics/downloader-middleware.rst b/docs/topics/downloader-middleware.rst
index 1ab8f588f..33308940c 100644
--- a/docs/topics/downloader-middleware.rst
+++ b/docs/topics/downloader-middleware.rst
@@ -1249,8 +1249,11 @@ AJAXCRAWL_ENABLED
 
 Default: ``False``
 
-Whether the AjaxCrawlMiddleware will be enabled. You may want to
-enable it for :ref:`broad crawls <topics-broad-crawls>`.
+Whether the AjaxCrawlMiddleware will be enabled.
+
+   .. note::
+
+       This middleware is deprecated and will be removed in a future Scrapy release.
 
 HttpProxyMiddleware settings
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
diff --git a/scrapy/downloadermiddlewares/ajaxcrawl.py b/scrapy/downloadermiddlewares/ajaxcrawl.py
index 166192b4f..e7a8962a1 100644
--- a/scrapy/downloadermiddlewares/ajaxcrawl.py
+++ b/scrapy/downloadermiddlewares/ajaxcrawl.py
@@ -3,11 +3,13 @@ from __future__ import annotations
 import logging
 import re
 from typing import TYPE_CHECKING
+from warnings import warn
 
 from w3lib import html
 
-from scrapy.exceptions import NotConfigured
+from scrapy.exceptions import NotConfigured, ScrapyDeprecationWarning
 from scrapy.http import HtmlResponse, Response
+from scrapy.utils.url import escape_ajax
 
 if TYPE_CHECKING:
     # typing.Self requires Python 3.11
@@ -30,6 +32,13 @@ class AjaxCrawlMiddleware:
         if not settings.getbool("AJAXCRAWL_ENABLED"):
             raise NotConfigured
 
+        warn(
+            "scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.ajaxcrawl.AjaxCrawlMiddleware is deprecated"
+            " and will be removed in a future Scrapy version.",
+            ScrapyDeprecationWarning,
+            stacklevel=2,
+        )
+
         # XXX: Google parses at least first 100k bytes; scrapy's redirect
         # middleware parses first 4k. 4k turns out to be insufficient
         # for this middleware, and parsing 100k could be slow.
@@ -56,8 +65,7 @@ class AjaxCrawlMiddleware:
         if not self._has_ajax_crawlable_variant(response):
             return response
 
-        # scrapy already handles #! links properly
-        ajax_crawl_request = request.replace(url=request.url + "#!")
+        ajax_crawl_request = request.replace(url=escape_ajax(request.url + "#!"))
         logger.debug(
             "Downloading AJAX crawlable %(ajax_crawl_request)s instead of %(request)s",
             {"ajax_crawl_request": ajax_crawl_request, "request": request},
@@ -75,7 +83,6 @@ class AjaxCrawlMiddleware:
         return _has_ajaxcrawlable_meta(body)
 
 
-# XXX: move it to w3lib?
 _ajax_crawlable_re: re.Pattern[str] = re.compile(
     r'<meta\s+name=["\']fragment["\']\s+content=["\']!["\']/?>'
 )
diff --git a/scrapy/http/request/__init__.py b/scrapy/http/request/__init__.py
index 4eee5ffbb..e24f6874d 100644
--- a/scrapy/http/request/__init__.py
+++ b/scrapy/http/request/__init__.py
@@ -27,7 +27,6 @@ from scrapy.http.headers import Headers
 from scrapy.utils.curl import curl_to_request_kwargs
 from scrapy.utils.python import to_bytes
 from scrapy.utils.trackref import object_ref
-from scrapy.utils.url import escape_ajax
 
 if TYPE_CHECKING:
     from collections.abc import Callable, Iterable, Mapping
@@ -170,8 +169,7 @@ class Request(object_ref):
         if not isinstance(url, str):
             raise TypeError(f"Request url must be str, got {type(url).__name__}")
 
-        s = safe_url_string(url, self.encoding)
-        self._url = escape_ajax(s)
+        self._url = safe_url_string(url, self.encoding)
 
         if (
             "://" not in self._url
diff --git a/scrapy/utils/url.py b/scrapy/utils/url.py
index db2749d79..1348cc992 100644
--- a/scrapy/utils/url.py
+++ b/scrapy/utils/url.py
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ import warnings
 from importlib import import_module
 from typing import TYPE_CHECKING, Union
 from urllib.parse import ParseResult, urldefrag, urlparse, urlunparse
+from warnings import warn
 
 from w3lib.url import __all__ as _public_w3lib_objects
 from w3lib.url import add_or_replace_parameter as _add_or_replace_parameter
@@ -83,6 +84,11 @@ def escape_ajax(url: str) -> str:
     >>> escape_ajax("www.example.com/ajax.html")
     'www.example.com/ajax.html'
     """
+    warn(
+        "escape_ajax() is deprecated and will be removed in a future Scrapy version.",
+        ScrapyDeprecationWarning,
+        stacklevel=2,
+    )
     defrag, frag = urldefrag(url)
     if not frag.startswith("!"):
         return url
diff --git a/tests/test_downloadermiddleware_ajaxcrawlable.py b/tests/test_downloadermiddleware_ajaxcrawlable.py
index 043dc0a12..63bd158f6 100644
--- a/tests/test_downloadermiddleware_ajaxcrawlable.py
+++ b/tests/test_downloadermiddleware_ajaxcrawlable.py
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 import unittest
 
+import pytest
+
 from scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.ajaxcrawl import AjaxCrawlMiddleware
 from scrapy.http import HtmlResponse, Request, Response
 from scrapy.spiders import Spider
@@ -8,6 +10,7 @@ from scrapy.utils.test import get_crawler
 __doctests__ = ["scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.ajaxcrawl"]
 
 
+@pytest.mark.filterwarnings("ignore::scrapy.exceptions.ScrapyDeprecationWarning")
 class AjaxCrawlMiddlewareTest(unittest.TestCase):
     def setUp(self):
         crawler = get_crawler(Spider, {"AJAXCRAWL_ENABLED": True})
diff --git a/tests/test_http_request.py b/tests/test_http_request.py
index 9915aaca4..a8ab8240f 100644
--- a/tests/test_http_request.py
+++ b/tests/test_http_request.py
@@ -187,18 +187,6 @@ class RequestTest(unittest.TestCase):
         assert isinstance(r4.body, bytes)
         self.assertEqual(r4.body, b"Price: \xa3100")
 
-    def test_ajax_url(self):
-        # ascii url
-        r = self.request_class(url="http://www.example.com/ajax.html#!key=value")
-        self.assertEqual(
-            r.url, "http://www.example.com/ajax.html?_escaped_fragment_=key%3Dvalue"
-        )
-        # unicode url
-        r = self.request_class(url="http://www.example.com/ajax.html#!key=value")
-        self.assertEqual(
-            r.url, "http://www.example.com/ajax.html?_escaped_fragment_=key%3Dvalue"
-        )
-
     def test_copy(self):
         """Test Request copy"""