Google Premier Partner
Meta Business PartnerWhat is Googlebot?
Googlebot is Google’s crawler: the program that automatically requests web pages so Google can assess them and add them to the search index. There are two main variants, Googlebot Smartphone and Googlebot Desktop. For most websites, the smartphone variant is the more important one.
Why is Googlebot important?
- No visit, no index: a page Googlebot cannot reach rarely appears in Google.
- It decides what Google sees: Googlebot reads your text, code and images.
- Server load: a slow or faulty server limits visits.
Examples of Googlebot
- A line
User-agent: Googlebotin robots.txt that addresses only Googlebot. - Googlebot visits you can see in your server logs.
- The URL Inspection tool in Search Console, which shows how Googlebot sees your page.
How do you work with Googlebot?
Make sure important pages are not blocked in robots.txt and load quickly without errors. Test pages with the URL Inspection tool in Search Console and, for large sites, review the server logs. Note that the Googlebot name can be faked, so verify suspicious visitors. See also technical SEO.