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Search crawler

What is Googlebot?

Googlebot is Google's search crawler that finds and indexes pages for Google Search.

Classic searchFollows robots.txtIP list
Operator
Google
Purpose
Classic search. Search engines. Blocking them removes you from search results.
robots.txt token
Googlebot
Sample user agent
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36User agents change with versions. Match on the token, not the full string.
Follows robots.txt
Yes, according to Google. Google says its common crawlers always respect robots.txt rules for automatic crawls.
How to verify
Check the IP against Google's published list.Reverse DNS on googlebot.com or google.com, confirmed with a forward lookup.
Sources
Google documentationGoogle IP list
Last reviewed

Allow or block Googlebot

Blocking Googlebot removes your pages from Google search results, so we don't offer that snippet. If you need to, write the rule by hand.

Allow Googlebot
User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /

Lets Googlebot crawl everything. You only need this if a broader rule would otherwise block it.

Should you block it?

Keep Googlebot allowed. Blocking it removes your pages from Google search results.

Write a full policy with the AI Crawler Policy Generator

How to verify a Googlebot request

  1. Find the IP address of the request in your server or CDN logs.
  2. Get Google's published list (Google IP list).
  3. Check whether the IP falls inside one of the ranges. If it doesn't, the request is not from Googlebot, whatever its user agent says.

Or with reverse DNS

  1. Run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP (host 192.0.2.1, with the IP from your log).
  2. Check the hostname ends in googlebot.com or google.com.
  3. Run a forward lookup on that hostname and check it returns the same IP. Both steps must pass.
Test Googlebot requests

Questions about Googlebot

Is Googlebot safe to allow?

Googlebot reads public pages; it does not log in or submit forms. Whether to allow it depends on whether you want Google's product to use your pages.

How do I know a request is really Googlebot?

Check the request against what Google publishes: Check the IP against Google's published list. Reverse DNS on googlebot.com or google.com, confirmed with a forward lookup. The user agent alone proves nothing.

How often does Googlebot visit?

It depends on your site; Google doesn't publish a schedule. Referscope shows the real visits.

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