AdsBot-Google

User agent

AdsBot-Google

MetricRaven matches this token anywhere in the request's user agent, ignoring case. Operators add version numbers and browser text around it, for example "AdsBot-Google/1.0".

IP verification

Verified when the user agent and the IP range both match

1. 1User agent

   The request's user agent contains AdsBot-Google.

2. 2Request IP

   Your server-side tracker sends the IP that made the request.

3. 3Range check

   The IP is compared with the ranges Google publishes, refreshed twice a day.

Range sources

• Google special-case crawlers

  https://developers.google.com/static/crawling/ipranges/special-crawlers.json

Control it in robots.txt

User-agent: AdsBot-Google
Disallow: /private/

Well-behaved crawlers re-read robots.txt within a day or so.

Questions

What is AdsBot-Google?

Checks the quality of landing pages used in Google Ads. MetricRaven groups it under Other bots: ad checks, link previews, feed readers, SEO tools and other bots.

How do I verify that a request really comes from AdsBot-Google?

Check both the user agent and the IP. Requests from AdsBot-Google contain "AdsBot-Google" in the user agent and come from the IP ranges Google publishes (https://developers.google.com/static/crawling/ipranges/special-crawlers.json). A request with the name but another IP is likely spoofed.

How do I block or allow AdsBot-Google?

Add a robots.txt group for "AdsBot-Google" with the paths to allow or disallow. Fetchers that act for a user may ignore robots.txt; block those at your server or firewall instead.

How can I see when AdsBot-Google visits my website?

Most crawlers never run JavaScript, so browser analytics miss them. MetricRaven's @metricraven/ai-crawl package reports crawler requests from your server, verifies their IPs against published ranges, and shows which pages each crawler reads.