Agent directory · AI and search crawler
Google-InspectionTool
Used by Google Search Console's URL Inspection and the Rich Results Test, when someone tests a page.
- Run by
- Type
- AI and search crawler
- Robots.txt name
Google-InspectionTool- Verifiable
- Yes
What Google-InspectionTool does
Used by Google Search Console's URL Inspection and the Rich Results Test, when someone tests a page.
As an AI and search crawler, it indexes pages so a search engine or AI search tool can find, cite and link to them. The kinds of AI agent that visit websites.
Should you allow it?
Allow it, unless you deliberately want to stay out of that search engine. Blocking it removes you from its results and answers. A decision guide for blocking or allowing AI crawlers.
How to allow or block Google-InspectionTool
Google-InspectionTool reads the Google-InspectionTool group in your robots.txt. To block it everywhere:
User-agent: Google-InspectionTool
Disallow: /To allow it everywhere, even if another rule blocks other bots:
User-agent: Google-InspectionTool
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:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Google-InspectionTool/1.0;)How to tell if it's really Google-InspectionTool
You can check a request that claims to be Google-InspectionTool 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
- Storebot-Google: AI and search crawler
- AdsBot-Google: other bot
- 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 Google-InspectionTool visit your site? Ghost Agent Lab reads your CDN or server logs and shows every request from Google-InspectionTool 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.