Google Updates Googlebot Verification Documentation

Google up to date their Search Central Documentation to on verifying Googlebot, including documentation about user-triggered bot visits, data that was lacking from earlier Googlebot documentation, which has created confusion for a few years, with some publishers blocking the IP ranges of the reputable visits.

Newly Up to date Bot Documentation

Google added a brand new documentation that categorizes the three completely different sorts of bots that publishers ought to count on.

These are the three classes of Google Bots:

• Googlebot – Search crawler
• Particular-case crawlers
• Consumer-triggered fetchers (GoogleUserContent)

That final one, GoogleUserContent is one which’s confused publishers for a very long time as a result of Google didn’t have any documentation about it.

That is what Google says about GoogleUserContent:

“Consumer-triggered fetchers

Instruments and product features the place the top person triggers a fetch.

For instance, Google Website Verifier acts on the request of a person.

As a result of the fetch was requested by a person, these fetchers ignore robots.txt guidelines.”

The documentation states that the reverse DNS masks will present the next area:

“***-***-***-***.gae.googleusercontent.com”

Previously, what I used to be instructed by some within the search engine marketing neighborhood, is that bot exercise from IP addresses related to GoogleUserContent.com was triggered when a person seen a web site via a translate operate that was within the search outcomes, a characteristic that now not exists in Google’s SERPs.

I don’t know if that’s true or not. It was sufficient to know that it was a go to from Google, triggered by customers.

Google’s new documentation explains that bot exercise from IP addresses related to GoogleUserContent.com may be triggered by the Google Website Verifier software.

However Google doesn’t say what else would possibly set off a bot from the GoogleUserContent.com IP addresses.

The opposite change within the documentation is a reference to googleusercontent.com within the context of IP addresses which might be assigned to the area title, GoogleUserContent.com.

That is the brand new textual content:

“Verify that the domain name is either googlebot.com, google.com, or googleusercontent.com.”

One other new addition is the next textual content which was expanded from the previous web page:

“Alternatively, you may establish Googlebot by IP handle by matching the crawler’s IP handle to the lists of Google crawlers’ and fetchers’ IP ranges:

Googlebot

Particular crawlers like AdsBot

Consumer triggered fetches”

Google Bot Identification Documentation

The brand new documentation lastly has one thing about bots that use IP addresses which might be related to GoogleUserContent.

Search Entrepreneurs had been confused by these IP addresses and assumed that these bots had been spam.

A Google Search Console Assist dialogue from 2020 reveals how confused folks had been about exercise related to GoogleUserContent.

Many in that dialogue rightly concluded that it was not Googlebot however then mistakenly concluded that it was a pretend bot pretending to be Google.

A person posted:

“The behaviour I see coming from these addresses could be very shut (if not similar) to reputable Googlebot behaviour, and it hits a number of websites of ours.

…If it isn’t – then this appears to point there’s widespread malicious bot exercise by somebody attempting fairly arduous to seem like Google on our websites which is regarding.”

After a number of responses the one that began the dialogue concludes that the GoogleUserContent exercise was spam.

They wrote:

“…The Googlebots in query do mimic the official Consumer-Brokers, however because it stands the proof appears to level to them being pretend.

I’ll block them for now.”

Now we all know that bot exercise from IPs related to GoogleUserContent usually are not spam or hacker bots.

They are surely from Google. Publishers who’re at present blocking IP addresses related to GoogleUserContent ought to in all probability unblock them.

The present record of User Triggered Fetcher IP addresses is available here.

Learn Google’s up to date documentation:

Verifying Googlebot and other Google crawlers

Featured picture by Shutterstock/Asier Romero