Googlebot IP checker
Is that Googlebot in your logs really Google? Paste the IP addresses and this free Googlebot IP checker tells you which are real Google crawlers and which are fake, using Google's own published IP lists and a reverse and forward DNS lookup.
This tool checks once.Server Log Monitoring keeps checking.
It checks on a schedule and alerts you the moment the result changes, so you never have to remember to run this again. Ask Theo, the AI assistant in the app, and it explains any finding in plain words.
What it checks
- Matches each address against Google's five published IP range files, for Googlebot, special-case crawlers like AdsBot and user-triggered fetchers, and names the file it is in
- Runs the reverse DNS lookup Google describes, then looks the name up again to confirm it points back to the same address
- Reads IPv4 and IPv6, including the ::ffff: form many servers log IPv4 visitors in
- Calls an address fake only when it is outside every list and its DNS says it is not Google. When DNS does not answer, it says Failed the check instead
What it does not
- It checks an address, not a request. Whether a hit was a fake Googlebot depends on it claiming to be Googlebot, which only your logs show
- A googleusercontent.com name alone does not verify an address, because that domain covers more than Google's crawlers. Such an address passes only if it is in one of Google's lists
- DNS lookups go through Google Public DNS over HTTPS. When it does not answer, an address is judged on Google's lists alone
- It takes up to 20 addresses at a time, pasted in. It does not read a log file
Questions
What IP addresses does Googlebot use?
Google publishes them as JSON files of IP ranges, one per kind of crawler. Googlebot is in common-crawlers.json, AdsBot and the other special-case crawlers are in special-crawlers.json, and fetches a person triggers are in the user-triggered files.
The ranges change, so check against the current files rather than a copy pasted into a firewall rule once.
How do I verify Googlebot?
Google documents two ways. Match the address against its published IP ranges, or run a reverse DNS lookup, check that the name ends in googlebot.com, google.com or googleusercontent.com, then look that name up and confirm it returns the same address. This tool runs both.
Why would anyone fake Googlebot?
Many sites let Googlebot through rules that stop other bots, so scrapers send its user agent to get the same treatment. Blocking a fake Googlebot is safe. Blocking the real one by mistake keeps your pages out of Google.
How do I catch fake Googlebots in my logs automatically?
Server Log Monitoring checks every bot hit in your access logs against the IP ranges or reverse DNS names that bot publishes, and marks it Verified, Failed the check, Cannot be checked or Fake. Fakes are listed by the bot name they used and the network they came from, and an alert fires when fake bot traffic rises.
More free tools
Fair use, and how to recognize us
5 per minute · 25 per hour · 100 per day per IP (per /64 for IPv6), plus a per-site limit
Every request these tools make sends this user agent, including the ones that load a page in a real browser. What a run records is set out in our privacy policy.
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; VitalSentinel Free Tools Bot/1.0; +https://www.vitalsentinel.com/bot)
Stop checking by hand
Core Web Vitals from real users, indexing and robots.txt, uptime and SSL, monitored continuously. Start on the Free plan and add your first domain in under a minute.