Google-InspectionTool: what it is and how to block or allow it

What Google-InspectionTool does

Google-InspectionTool is the crawler behind Google's Search testing tools, such as the Rich Results Test and URL Inspection in Search Console. It fetches a page so the tool can show how Google sees it. Its visits usually follow someone running a test on your page, often you or your SEO team.

• Rules for Googlebot also apply to Google-InspectionTool, so blocking Googlebot blocks the testing tools as well. Source

Does Google-InspectionTool follow robots.txt?

Yes. Google lists it among its common crawlers, which always obey robots.txt. It follows rules written for Google-InspectionTool or for Googlebot.

It doesn't honor Crawl-delay.

How to block or allow Google-InspectionTool

Block it from the whole site:

User-agent: Google-InspectionTool
Disallow: /

Keep it out of one folder only:

User-agent: Google-InspectionTool
Disallow: /private/

A crawler that finds a group with its own name follows only that group and ignores User-agent: *. If your * group disallows paths such as /admin/, repeat those lines in the Google-InspectionTool group. robots.txt works per host, so add the rules to each subdomain you want covered.

Test the result with the robots.txt checker, or write a new file with the robots.txt generator.

What blocking Google-InspectionTool changes

Google's testing tools can no longer fetch your pages. Google says this has no effect on Google Search or its other products.

Where to see Google-InspectionTool visits

Most bots never appear in Google Analytics. Many don't run JavaScript, so the analytics tag never loads, and Google Analytics 4 automatically excludes traffic from known bots and spiders. Your server or CDN logs record every request with its user agent, so search them for the bot's name.

OneLence recognizes Google-InspectionTool and keeps it out of your visitor counts. With Premium, bot traffic shows which bots visit your site, how often and what kind they are.

Other bots from Google

• Google-Extended: Not a crawler: the robots.txt setting for Gemini training and grounding. It doesn't affect Google Search.
• Googlebot: Googlebot is Google Search's crawler. Its crawl also decides whether your pages can appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode, so blocking it takes you out of both.
• Storebot-Google: Storebot-Google is Google's shopping crawler. It fetches pages for Google Shopping surfaces such as the Shopping tab in Search.
• GoogleOther: GoogleOther is a general-purpose Google crawler that product teams use for jobs outside Search, such as research crawls. Blocking it doesn't affect Google Search.
• Google-Agent: Google-Agent is the name AI agents running on Google's infrastructure use when they browse sites and take actions because a user asked them to.
• Google-GeminiNotebook: Google-GeminiNotebook fetches a page when a Gemini Notebook user adds it as a source. It replaced the NotebookLM fetcher in July 2026.
• Google-Read-Aloud: Google-Read-Aloud fetches a page when someone asks Google to read it out loud. robots.txt doesn't stop it; a meta tag does.
• AdsBot-Google: AdsBot-Google checks the quality of Google Ads landing pages. It ignores the User-agent: * group, so it has to be named to be blocked, and blocking it can get your ads disapproved.
• Mediapartners-Google: Mediapartners-Google is the AdSense crawler. It reads pages that carry Google ad tags to pick relevant ads, and it ignores the User-agent: * group.