AI crawlers · SEO and research crawlers

`AdsBot-Google`

AdsBot-Google is the tool or developer fetch run by Google: Google Ads quality. Its operator documents how to verify it: Google special-crawler ranges (shared feed) + reverse DNS to google.com. A reverse DNS lookup on the source address must return the operator's domain, and a forward lookup on that name must return the same address.

User-agent token	`AdsBot-Google`
Operator	Google
What it does	Google Ads quality
Kind	tool or developer fetch
Can a request be verified?	Yes — reverse dns
Verification source	Google special-crawler ranges (shared feed) + reverse DNS to google.com
In a CrawlCheck scan	Read from robots.txt; reported, never scored

Allow or block it in robots.txt

User-agent: AdsBot-Google
Disallow: /

User-agent: AdsBot-Google
Allow: /

Add a group that names it: "User-agent: AdsBot-Google" followed by "Disallow: /". A crawler follows only the most specific group that names it, so once a group names AdsBot-Google, rules under "User-agent: *" no longer apply to it; repeat in that group any Disallow lines you still want.

What blocking it changes

No. It is a third-party tool's crawler. Blocking it changes what that tool knows about your site, not anyone's AI answers.

What it actually did on crawlcheck.io

Verified requests	3
Requests using its name from outside its operator's ranges	0 (0% of claims)
robots.txt fetched	0 times
Fetches of paths robots.txt disallows	0
Observed	2026-10-27 to 2026-10-30

Measured on this site’s own traffic, verified against the operator’s published ranges. Every agent’s record: agent conduct.

Other agents from Google

Google-CloudVertexBot — Vertex AI grounding
Googlebot — Google Search / AI Overviews
Google-Extended — Gemini training
Googlebot-Image — Google image crawler
Googlebot-News — Google News
Googlebot-Video — Google video crawler
Storebot-Google — Google Shopping
Mediapartners-Google — Google AdSense
APIs-Google — Google push delivery
GoogleOther — Google non-search fetch
Gemini-Deep-Research — Gemini research agent
Google-Agent — Google user-triggered agent, acts on the web
Google-GeminiNotebook — Gemini Notebook user-supplied URL fetch
GoogleOther-Image — Google common crawler, public image URLs
GoogleOther-Video — Google common crawler, public video URLs

See what AdsBot-Google and every other named agent receive from your own site: run a free scan. The full catalogue is on AI crawlers and as JSON at /ai-crawlers.json.

Questions about AdsBot-Google

QHow do I block AdsBot-Google in robots.txt?

QHow can I tell if a request from AdsBot-Google is real?

Its operator documents how to verify it: Google special-crawler ranges (shared feed) + reverse DNS to google.com. A reverse DNS lookup on the source address must return the operator's domain, and a forward lookup on that name must return the same address.

QDoes blocking AdsBot-Google affect whether my site appears in AI answers?

No. It is a third-party tool's crawler. Blocking it changes what that tool knows about your site, not anyone's AI answers.

QDoes CrawlCheck test my site as AdsBot-Google?

Not as a request. CrawlCheck reads the rules your robots.txt sets for AdsBot-Google and reports them. Rules for it are reported and never scored, because refusing it is a policy choice.