views:

84

answers:

3

Hi there,

With all HTTP data available,

What 'signs' can you look for to recognize Google's search engine robots?

+1  A: 

As far as I know, Google's crawlers have the user-agent set to "Googlebot".

Other search engine providers typically stick to a recognisable name in the user-agent; there are various lists of well-known agents, such as that on http://www.jafsoft.com/searchengines/webbots.html.

Rob
It is the link i was looking for, thank you !
Boris Guéry
+2  A: 

How to verify googlebot - the official method.

bdonlan
great link! does anyone know of any major google IP routes?
divinci
It's probably changing unpredictably. Just use the DNS method there and you should be fine.
bdonlan
+1  A: 

The User-Agent header should be enough to detect the Google bot

Check out user-agents.org website to get a list of known se bot

By the you would like to want to be sure that's a true googlebot from google, then you can check out the ip/host which is always

c[nn].googlebot.com

Where [nn] is a number.

Boris Guéry