Ad network crawler
AdsBot-Google
Crawlers an ad network runs over your pages to decide what to serve on them, or whether to serve at all.
Last updated
At a glance
| Category | Ad network crawler |
|---|---|
| User agent match | contains "adsbot-google" |
| Executes JavaScript | No |
| Respects robots.txt | Generally yes |
| Identity verifiable | Yes, against published IP ranges |
| IVT class | GIVT (general invalid traffic: declared automation) |
What AdsBot-Google is
AdsBot-Google is run by an advertising platform rather than a search engine. It reads your page to judge what belongs on it: matching ads to content, or checking that a landing page is what the ad promised. Its visit is a fact about your ad account, not about your search visibility, and it is why a page can be crawled heavily by a company whose search bot never came.
Can the name be trusted?
The operator publishes the IP ranges AdsBot-Google calls from, and TrueVisit checks every visit claiming this name against them. A claim arriving from an address outside the published ranges fails verification and is reported as exactly that, so an impostor borrowing the name cannot borrow the trust.
Should you block it?
Do not block AdsBot-Google if you run ads or carry ad units. Blocking the crawler that decides what to serve on a page is the fastest way to have nothing served on it, or to have a landing page marked unreviewable. Filter it out of your human numbers instead, which is what this tool does for you.
How TrueVisit reports it
Visits from AdsBot-Google appear in your bot report under this exact name, never as an anonymous percentage, and every verdict stores the reason it was reached. Because this client never executes JavaScript, a browser-only tracker cannot see it at all; it is visible through server-side collection, which is how the visits reach your report.