Vol. I · Fri, 2 Oct 2026Open 24 hours · Feeding: continuous · Please do not tap the glass
Plate XLVII0xC3767571UNREAD
Kingdom Automata›Phylum HTTP›Order Crawlers›Family Search Engines›Species Google-InspectionTool
Specimen file · Search Engine Savanna

Google-InspectionTool

Googlebotus inspector

What is Google-InspectionTool?

Google's testing crawler, used by Search Console's URL Inspection and the Rich Results Test. It visits when someone asks Google to check a page. It is operated by Google and identifies itself as Google-InspectionTool.

Temperament: diligent. Only comes when called. Checks everything twice. Writes a report nobody asked it to make pretty.

Operator
Google
Conservation status
Has not read the rules
First seen
2 Oct 2026
Last seen
1 h ago
Visits today
6
This week
6
All time
6
Caught in the trap
Never
§ I.

Identification

Its full user-agent string, exactly as it arrives at the gate:

User-Agent
$ Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Google-InspectionTool/1.0;)

To check a visitor really is Google-InspectionTool, run a reverse DNS lookup on its IP address and confirm the hostname ends in .googlebot.com, .google.com, .googleusercontent.com. Then run a forward lookup on that hostname and check it returns the same IP. Anything that fails is an impostor; the zoo checks every visit this way and files the failures in the Trap Room.

§ II.

How to block Google-InspectionTool

Add these two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. Well-behaved crawlers read it before they crawl, so the change applies from Google-InspectionTool's next visit. Nothing else on your site needs to change.

robots.txt
# Block Google-InspectionTool from the whole site
User-agent: Google-InspectionTool
Disallow: /

Blocking it stops Search Console from testing your pages. It does not affect Google Search itself.

Or let it visit but keep it away from part of the site:

# Let it in, but keep it out of one room
User-agent: Google-InspectionTool
Allow: /
Disallow: /members/
§ III.

Observed behaviour

Visits, last 30 dayspeak 6 / day
3 Sept 2026today
Diet · pages most often eaten
/robots-txt-generator4
/block-ai-crawlers2
Visiting hours
00h – 11h12h – 23h

Most active around 17:00. Office hours, like a professional.

robots.txt compliance
100.0%

Requested 0 disallowed pages out of 6 requests. Never read robots.txt.

Trap Room record
Clean

Has never followed the hidden link to /trap/. Either well trained or very lucky.

§ IV.

Where it comes from

Requests that use Google-InspectionTool's name but fail Google's network check are filed separately, as impostors. These are the visits that passed, or that could not be checked at the time:

Networks · 1 on file, last 30 days
Google LLC AS15169100%
Countries
United States US100%

Networks and countries come from the visitor's IP address, looked up in a local copy of the DB-IP database. The addresses themselves are never stored.

§ V.

Keeper's field notes

2 Oct 202617:10. Arrived without announcement. Consumed /robots-txt-generator. Departed.
2 Oct 2026Visited 6 times in a single day. Keeper unable to establish why.
2 Oct 2026First recorded at the gate. Entered in the register as Googlebotus inspector.
§ VI.

Questions site owners ask

Does Google-InspectionTool respect robots.txt?

We can't say yet. It has not fetched robots.txt here, and it has not touched a disallowed page either.

Will blocking Google-InspectionTool hurt my search rankings?

Yes, for Google's search engine. Blocked pages can drop out of its results. Other search engines are unaffected.

How often does Google-InspectionTool visit?

Here, about 1 requests a day over the last week. Visits to your site depend on its size, how often it changes, and how many links point to it.

Also in Search Engine Savanna