Googlebot
Crawls pages for Google Search using desktop and smartphone variants.
Web searchSEO analysis
Google-InspectionTool
Fetches pages for Google’s Search testing tools.
Operated by Google
See your agent traffic PurposeSEO analysis
HTTP identifierGoogle-InspectionTool
IdentityVerify beyond the name
THE SIGNAL
What this visit tells you
A test request can explain a one-off crawl during a Search Console investigation.
Crawled URLs
Broken destinations
Crawl duration
Your next move
Match the request time to the inspection and compare the returned page with your browser.
The technical details
MarkdownHow to identify it
Look for the Google-InspectionTool identifier in a request’s User-Agent. This is a name match, not identity verification. Version strings may change.
How to check identity
Use Google’s published IP ranges for this crawler class and its forward-confirmed reverse DNS procedure.
Access and robots.txt
The operator documents robots.txt rules for this identifier.
Optional full-site opt-out. Merge with existing rules only if intended. robots.txt does not secure private content.
User-agent: Google-InspectionTool
Disallow: /Seeing 403 or 404 responses?
403 means access was denied; 404 means the resource was not found. Compare the public path, request time, edge security event and origin response to find the cause.
Separate intended restrictions and secret-file probes from pages that should work. A User-Agent name alone does not justify allowing a request.
SourcesReviewed 2026-09-14
Identity and purpose are based on these sources. Analytics interpretation and suggested checks are Apostl guidance.
APOSTL PulseSee Google-InspectionTool in context
See their requests. Find the pages that matter.
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Different bots, different intent
Google-Extended
Controls content use for Gemini training and grounding; it does not control Google Search inclusion.
Content-use policyPolicy control · no separate crawlerGooglebot-Image
Fetches images for Google’s visual search features.
Web search