Spoofing Googlebot

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It crawls the Web without malice seeking out every possible bit of content.
It’s name is Googlebot, and sometimes it gets to see things on the Web that
the rest of don’t.

Unless of course you pretend to be Googlebot.

Superficially spoofing Googlebot, Google’s Web crawler, is not a difficult
thing to do and was recently the subject of a very popular post on the
Digg site. Since at least September of 2006 however, Google has made efforts
to help webmasters protect themselves against spoofed Googlebots. That
doesn’t mean people still aren’t trying to be Googlebot, if the popularity of
the Digg post is any indication.

Just like any user approaching a Web site, Googlebot identifies itself. The
mechanism by which Googlebot is identified at the top level is by something
called the “user agent.” In most cases, the user agent is defined and
reported to the visited Web site as the browser used to view the site.

When Googlebot visits a site, the user agent is Googlebot. So to appear as Googlebot to a site, all you need to
do is identify yourself, by way of the user agent, as Googlebot.

Doing so on Mozilla Firefox is a simple matter of using the User Agent
Switcher extension, which allows Firefox users to be any user agent they
choose. An even easier approach is to take advantage of BeTheBot, which enables users to see Web sites as Googlebot sees them.

Though using the Googlebot user agent may trick some sites into thinking
you’re actually Google’s all-seeing Web crawler, it could also end up
getting your IP address banned from sites if you get caught.

Since at least September, Google has provided webmasters with a
definitive way to verify Googlebot. In addition to the user agent, there is at
least one other key identifier for Googlebot, which is IP address.

“Any interested Web site owner can tell if a visitor is the real Googlebot,”
a Google spokesperson told internetnews.com. “Anyone can set their
browser to pretend to be any “user agent” that they want. How a particular
Web server decides to handle a particular browser or user agent is a choice
that the Web site owner makes.”

Google recommends that webmasters use DNS (define) to verify the
identity of the user agent defined “googlebot” on a case-by-case basis doing a
reverse DNS lookup that would verify that the suspect crawler is in the
googlebot.com domain.

Additionally Google recommends that webmasters also do
a forward DNS->IP lookup, which would prevent a potential spoofer from simply
setting up their own reverse DNS that points to the googlebot.com domain
space. Google posted details on its blog in September.

“Some people do different things for different user agents (e.g.
Googlebot),” Google’s spokesperson said. “If we believe deceptive or
malicious action is happening, Google can take action on that.”

This article was first published on InternetNews.com.