How do I know if a Googlebot visit is fake?

Anyone can put "Googlebot" in a user agent. A real Googlebot request comes from an IP address in Google's published Googlebot ranges. Paste the IP and user agent from your log into this fake Googlebot checker: it matches the user agent to a crawler, then checks the IP against that operator's published IP ranges, or forward-confirmed reverse DNS for operators that verify that way.

How do I verify Googlebot with reverse DNS?

Run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP (for example host 66.249.66.1). A real Googlebot resolves to a hostname ending in googlebot.com or google.com. Then run a forward lookup on that hostname: it must return the same IP. If either step fails, the request didn't come from Google. Google also publishes its crawler IP ranges, which is what this checker uses for Googlebot.

What does "can't tell" mean?

It means the result can't honestly be called real or fake: the user agent doesn't name a crawler we track, the operator doesn't publish IP ranges or a reverse DNS scheme, or our copy of their ranges is empty right now. Those cases are never labeled fake.

Which bots can it verify?

Crawlers whose operators publish IP ranges (Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Microsoft, Apple and others) or a reverse DNS scheme (such as Amazon and Yandex). The list and the ranges come from the same registry HadoSEO uses to verify crawler visits for customers, and the page shows when the ranges were last updated. If our copy of an operator's ranges is empty, the result says can't tell instead of guessing.

How do I check every bot in my server logs?

Upload a week of access logs to the free log file analyzer. It parses the logs in your browser, checks every IP that claims to be a known crawler the same way, and shows which crawler visits were real and which were spoofed.

Should I block fake Googlebots?

That's your call. Blocking by user agent alone also blocks the real crawler, so if you block, block by IP after verifying. HadoSEO flags spoofed crawlers in its crawl analytics rather than blocking them.

[ free tool · no signup ]

Fake Googlebot checker

Anyone can put Googlebot in a user agent. Paste an IP and user agent from your logs and this fake Googlebot checker tells you whether the request really came from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic or another crawler operator.

IP address

Claims to be

User agent (from your log)

IP ranges last updated Oct 25, 2026

Published IP ranges

The IP is checked against the crawler ranges the operator publishes, kept up to date by HadoSEO.

Reverse DNS, confirmed

For operators that verify by hostname, the reverse DNS name must resolve back to the same IP.

Honest verdicts

Verified, fake, or can't tell. A bot nobody can verify is never called fake.

[ beyond one IP ]

Check every crawler visit, not just one.

To analyze a whole log file, the free SEO log file analyzer runs this same check on every IP in a week of access logs, in your browser, and shows how many crawler visits were spoofed. To see whether your server answers bots differently from people, use the bot detection tester, and to see the page a crawler actually gets, the Googlebot simulator.

[ questions ]