Agent directory · Other bot
AdsBot-Google
Checks the quality of pages that Google Ads link to.
- Run by
- Type
- Other bot
- Robots.txt name
AdsBot-Google- Verifiable
- Yes
What AdsBot-Google does
Checks the quality of pages that Google Ads link to.
It's a well-known bot that isn't an AI agent. The kinds of AI agent that visit websites.
Should you allow it?
Usually allow it: these bots support products you already use. A decision guide for blocking or allowing AI crawlers.
How to allow or block AdsBot-Google
AdsBot-Google reads the AdsBot-Google group in your robots.txt. To block it everywhere:
User-agent: AdsBot-Google
Disallow: /To allow it everywhere, even if another rule blocks other bots:
User-agent: AdsBot-Google
Allow: /Robots.txt is a request, not a lock: well-behaved crawlers follow it, impostors don't. Robots.txt for AI agents.
How it identifies itself
A typical user agent:
AdsBot-Google (+http://www.google.com/adsbot.html)How to tell if it's really AdsBot-Google
You can check a request that claims to be AdsBot-Google against what Google publishes:
- IP ranges: developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/googlebot.json
- IP ranges: developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/special-crawlers.json
- IP ranges: developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/user-triggered-fetchers.json
- IP ranges: developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/user-triggered-fetchers-google.json
- Reverse DNS: the address resolves to a name ending in
googlebot.com,google.com,googleusercontent.com, and that name resolves back to the same address
Requests that use the name but fail these checks are impostors, usually scrapers trying to get past bot protection. Ghost Agent Lab checks every request this way and gives you rules to block impostors. How to verify AI crawlers.
Other agents from Google
- Googlebot: AI and search crawler
- Google-Extended: AI training crawler
- GoogleOther: AI training crawler
- Google-InspectionTool: AI and search crawler
- Storebot-Google: AI and search crawler
- Gemini-Deep-Research: AI assistant
- Google-CloudVertexBot: AI training crawler
- Google-Gemini-CLI: autonomous agent
- Google-NotebookLM: AI assistant
- GoogleAgent-Mariner: autonomous agent
- GoogleAgent-URLContext: AI assistant
Every Google agent, and a robots.txt for all of them →
Does AdsBot-Google visit your site? Ghost Agent Lab reads your CDN or server logs and shows every request from AdsBot-Google and 1,566+ other known agents: what they read, what your site sent back, and whether each request was genuine. See agent traffic, or check whether AI agents can use your site for free.