Googlebot News

AdsBot-Google is Google’s crawler responsible for evaluating landing pages used in Google Ads campaigns. It performs desktop-focused checks on page quality, load speed, relevance, and policy compliance. These assessments directly influence ad quality scores, cost efficiency, and overall eligibility. Blocking AdsBot prevents Google from reviewing landing pages, which can degrade or disable ad performance. Crawl activity is selective and tied to active or recently modified ad campaigns rather than broad indexing. Its purpose is to ensure that advertisers maintain fast, trustworthy, and policy-compliant landing pages. It ignores the global user agent (*) rule. RobotSense.io verifies AdsBot/AdsBot-Google using Google’s official validation methods, ensuring only genuine AdsBot/AdsBot-Google traffic is identified.

[This crawler is officially retired as per Google] AdsBot-Google-Mobile bot is Google’s mobile-focused crawler used to evaluate the landing page experience for Google Ads. It simulates mobile device conditions to assess page quality, load performance, mobile usability, and policy compliance. These evaluations directly influence Google Ads quality scores and ad eligibility. If you run ads, blocking it may negatively affect ad performance because Google cannot verify the mobile landing page experience. Crawl activity is targeted and low-volume, triggered when ads are created, updated, or actively running. Its purpose is ensuring advertisers provide fast, compliant, and user-friendly mobile pages. It ignores the global user agent (*) rule. RobotSense.io verifies AdsBot Mobile Web/AdsBot-Google-Mobile using Google’s official validation methods, ensuring only genuine AdsBot Mobile Web/AdsBot-Google-Mobile traffic is identified.

Mediapartners-Google is Google’s crawler dedicated to evaluating webpages for Google AdSense. It scans pages to understand content, layout, and context so Google can deliver relevant ads and optimize revenue for publishers. Unlike Googlebot, this crawler does not index content for Search - its role is purely advertising-related. Blocking it may prevent AdSense from analyzing pages and serving targeted ads effectively. Crawl activity is generally light and focused on pages where AdSense code is present, helping Google match ad inventory with page themes and user interests. It ignores the global user agent (*) rule. RobotSense.io verifies AdSense / Mediapartners-Google using Google’s official validation methods, ensuring only genuine AdSense / Mediapartners-Google traffic is identified.

APIs-Google is a service crawler used by Google to verify and interact with endpoints tied to various Google APIs. It is typically triggered when applications, scripts, or integrations using Google services need to fetch or validate external resources. Common use cases include OAuth flows, link previews, data validation, push notification messages, and API-driven checks performed on behalf of Google products. Crawl activity is usually low-volume and event-driven, reflecting specific API operations rather than broad crawling or indexing associated with Google Search. It ignores the global user agent (*) rule. RobotSense.io verifies APIs-Google using Google’s official validation methods, ensuring only genuine APIs-Google traffic is identified.

Chrome Web Store fetcher or Google-CWS is a Google user-agent associated with Chrome Web Services, typically used for link preview generation, safe browsing checks, and content fetching triggered by Chrome features. It performs lightweight requests to retrieve metadata, page titles, favicons, and safety signals from URLs that developers provide in the metadata of their Chrome extensions and themes. This bot is not a search crawler and does not influence Google Search indexing or rankings. Activity occurs when Chrome or Google services need to quickly inspect a URL for previews, safety evaluation, or rendering behavior. It ignores robots.txt rules. RobotSense.io verifies Chrome Web Store fetcher using Google’s official validation methods, ensuring only genuine Chrome Web Store fetcher traffic is identified.

[This crawler is officially retired as per Google] DuplexWeb-Google is a Google crawler associated with Duplex and Assistant-related technologies that fetch web content to help generate conversational responses and perform task-oriented actions. It retrieves page information needed to understand structured data, business details, menus, appointment flows, and other interactive elements. Crawl activity is selective and generally tied to user-initiated tasks or systems that prepare content for automated assistance. Its purpose is to support natural-language interactions by ensuring Google’s assistant technologies can interpret and use real-time webpage information accurately. It ignores the global user agent (*) rule. RobotSense.io verifies DuplexWeb-Google using Google’s official validation methods, ensuring only genuine DuplexWeb-Google traffic is identified.

by Amazon

[Amazon Bots can take upto 30 days to read your Robots.txt updates.] Amzn-SearchBot is Amazon’s web crawler used to discover and retrieve publicly available content for Amazon search and AI-related services. It fetches webpages to analyze text, metadata, and structured information that can support Amazon’s search features and machine learning systems. Crawl activity is typically moderate and focused on publicly accessible pages. Its purpose is to help Amazon improve content discovery, relevance, and information retrieval across its ecosystem. It ignores the global user agent (*) rule. RobotSense.io verifies Amzn-SearchBot using Amazon’s official validation methods, ensuring only genuine Amzn-SearchBot traffic is identified.

by Apple

Applebot is Apple's official web crawler used to power search and content features across Apple services such as Siri, Spotlight Suggestions, and Safari. It crawls webpages to discover content, metadata, and structured information that enhance on-device and cloud-based search experiences. Crawl activity is generally moderate and focused on high-quality, publicly accessible content. Its purpose is to improve search relevance, answers, and suggestions across Apple’s ecosystem without operating a standalone public web search engine. Data crawled by Applebot may be utilized by Apple for foundational model training. Apple allows site owners to opt-out of having their content used for generative model training by disallowing Applebot-Extended in the robots.txt file. RobotSense.io verifies Applebot using Apple's official validation methods, ensuring only genuine Applebot traffic is identified.

by Microsoft

Bingbot is Microsoft’s primary web crawler, responsible for discovering and indexing content for Bing Search and other Microsoft services. The crawler fetches HTML, structured data, images, and metadata to understand page relevance and ranking signals. Crawl activity varies based on site authority, update frequency, and sitemap signals. Its purpose is to keep Bing’s search index fresh, accurate, and aligned with user search intent across Microsoft platforms. RobotSense.io verifies Bingbot using Microsoft’s official validation methods, ensuring only genuine Bingbot traffic is identified.

by Microsoft

BingVideoPreview is Microsoft’s crawler for fetching video-related content to generate previews, thumbnails, and metadata for Bing’s video search experiences. It retrieves video files, poster images, structured data, captions, and surrounding context. This crawler does not perform full-site indexing; instead, it focuses specifically on video assets and the information required to power Bing’s video carousels and preview interfaces. Activity is targeted and relatively low-volume, driven by pages that contain or reference video content. RobotSense.io verifies BingVideoPreview using Microsoft’s official validation methods, ensuring only genuine BingVideoPreview traffic is identified.

by OpenAI

OAI-SearchBot is a search bot operated by OpenAI. Data collected from the bot is used to link to and surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features. As per OpenAI, it is not used to crawl content to train its generative AI foundation models. OpenAI recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot in your site’s robots.txt file to help ensure that your site appears in search results. RobotSense.io verifies OpenAI OAI-SearchBot using OpenAI’s official validation methods, ensuring only genuine OAI-SearchBot traffic is identified.

by Huawei

PetalBot is the web crawler operated by Huawei, used to power Petal Search and related Huawei mobile services. It crawls publicly accessible webpages to discover content, metadata, structured data, and links for indexing. PetalBot supports search results delivered across Huawei devices and applications. Crawl frequency depends on site authority, update frequency, and internal ranking signals, similar to other search engine crawlers. Its purpose is to build and maintain Huawei's independent search index for global users. RobotSense.io verifies PetalBot using Huawei's official validation methods, ensuring only genuine PetalBot traffic is identified.