What Google-InspectionTool does
Google-InspectionTool is the crawler behind Google's Search testing tools, specifically the Rich Result Test and URL Inspection in Search Console; it fetches a page when someone runs one of those tools against it. It has no effect on Google Search indexing or other Google products. It identifies itself with desktop and mobile user agent strings containing "Google-InspectionTool/1.0" and respects robots.txt rules like Google's other common crawlers.
How to control Google-InspectionTool
Target Google-InspectionTool in your robots.txt with the Google-InspectionTool token. Rules apply per bot, so you can allow this one while blocking others, or the reverse.
Allow Google-InspectionTool
User-agent: Google-InspectionTool
Allow: /Block Google-InspectionTool
User-agent: Google-InspectionTool
Disallow: /In robots.txt, Google-InspectionTool matches rules addressed to the "Google-InspectionTool" token, and if none exist it falls back to rules addressed to "Googlebot"; because user agent strings can be spoofed, Google recommends verifying requests against its published IP ranges.
How to identify Google-InspectionTool
Temso identifies Google-InspectionTooltraffic by matching the request's User-Agent header against this pattern. User-agent strings can be spoofed, so treat a match as an indication, not proof.
Google-InspectionToolGoogle-InspectionTool FAQ
What is Google-InspectionTool?
Google-InspectionTool is the crawler used by Google's Search testing tools, namely the Rich Result Test and URL Inspection in Search Console, and it fetches pages when those tools are run. It does not affect Google Search indexing or other Google products.
How do I block Google-InspectionTool?
Add a robots.txt group with "User-agent: Google-InspectionTool" followed by "Disallow: /". If no group names Google-InspectionTool specifically, it follows rules addressed to "Googlebot" instead, so a Googlebot disallow also blocks it; blocking it prevents the URL Inspection and Rich Result Test tools from fetching your pages.
About Operational Bots
Monitoring, security scanning, link previews, webhooks, and feed fetchers: the utility traffic that keeps integrations and shared links working.
Most of this traffic is service-critical or user-triggered. Webhooks and previews don't follow robots.txt, and blocking them tends to break things you rely on.
