Other bots
FeedFetcher-Google
Fetches RSS and Atom feeds for Google News and WebSub.
May skip robots.txt- User agent token
- FeedFetcher-Google
- Operator
- Verification
- Published IP list
- Source
- Google documentation
What a bot for ads, link previews or SEO tools does
These bots work for a specific product: checking an ad's landing page, drawing the preview when a link is shared, or collecting data for an SEO tool. Some only visit because the site owner asked them to.
Google says user-triggered fetchers generally ignore robots.txt, because a person asked for the fetch.
Block or allow FeedFetcher-Google in robots.txt
Add one of these to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain. Crawlers read it before they fetch anything else.
Block FeedFetcher-Google
User-agent: FeedFetcher-Google
Disallow: /
Allow FeedFetcher-Google
User-agent: FeedFetcher-Google
Allow: /
More from Google
Questions, answered.
FeedFetcher-Google is a bot for ads, link previews or SEO tools run by Google. Fetches RSS and Atom feeds for Google News and WebSub.
Not always. FeedFetcher-Google fetches pages for a person, and Google says robots.txt may not apply. Google says user-triggered fetchers generally ignore robots.txt, because a person asked for the fetch.
Add "User-agent: FeedFetcher-Google" and "Disallow: /" to your robots.txt. Since robots.txt may not stop it, block it at your firewall or server too.
Check the request's IP address against the list Google publishes. A user agent alone proves nothing, since any script can copy it.
No. FeedFetcher-Google works for one product, such as ad checks, link previews or SEO data, rather than bringing visitors.
Only if you don't use the product it works for. Blocking FeedFetcher-Google is safe for your search rankings.
In its own documentation at https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-user-triggered-fetchers. Every fact on this page comes from there.
Still have questions? We're happy to help.
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