Google-InspectionTool
The fetcher behind your own Search Console testing tools — URL Inspection and the Rich Results Test.
At a glance
- Operator
- Category
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Search engine
A classic search crawler whose index also feeds that company's AI answers. Blocking it removes you from both the blue links and the AI summaries above them.
- User-Agent token
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Google-InspectionTool - robots.txt token
Google-InspectionTool- Respects robots.txt
- Documented as compliant
- Operator docs
- developers.google.com
What Google-InspectionTool does
Should you block Google-InspectionTool?
Our take
Don't. Blocking Google-InspectionTool removes you from Google altogether — the ordinary results and the AI answers built on top of them. If what you actually want is to stay in search while staying out of model training, that is a separate token, and it's the one to reach for. MetaPilot shows Google-InspectionTool in your crawler analytics but won't write a block for it from the dashboard.
The robots.txt rules for Google-InspectionTool
Add the rule below to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain
(yourdomain.com/robots.txt). Use the Google-InspectionTool token rather than the raw
User-Agent string, and repeat the rule on every subdomain you want covered.
New to the file? Read what robots.txt is first.
The allow rule is the one you want. The disallow variant is documented below for completeness, but it removes your site from Google entirely. Don't paste it unless that is genuinely what you intend.
Allow Google-InspectionTool explicitly
User-agent: Google-InspectionTool Allow: /
Block Google-InspectionTool — removes you from Google
User-agent: Google-InspectionTool Disallow: /
A note on what this does and doesn't do. robots.txt is a request, not a lock —
it works because well-behaved crawlers choose to read it. It also isn't retroactive: anything already
fetched stays fetched. If you need a hard stop, block at your firewall or CDN as well.
How MetaPilot handles Google-InspectionTool
MetaPilot detects Google-InspectionTool in your edge logs, so you see its real hits on your
real pages rather than a guess: how often it visits, which URLs it takes, and how that trend moves week to
week. From the same screen you flip Google-InspectionTool between allow and deny with one click —
MetaPilot rewrites only its own managed section of your
robots.txt and serves it at the edge, so the change is live on the crawler's next visit with
no deploy and no touching your own rules.
See AI-crawler analytics or follow the guide to
monitor and control AI crawlers.
Related crawlers
Googlebot
Google's main search crawler — and, indirectly, the crawler behind AI Overviews, because those are generated from the index it builds.
Googlebot-Image
Googlebot's image-fetching counterpart, which populates Google Images.
Googlebot-News
A robots.txt token for Google News, not a separate crawler — the fetching is done by Googlebot.
Googlebot-Video
Googlebot's video-fetching counterpart, which populates Google's video results.
FAQ
What is Google-InspectionTool?
The fetcher behind your own Search Console testing tools — URL Inspection and the Rich Results Test.
Google-InspectionTool runs when someone asks Google to fetch a page on demand, usually you, from the URL Inspection tool in Search Console or the Rich Results Test. It mimics Googlebot so that what you see in the test matches what Googlebot would see.
Does Google-InspectionTool respect robots.txt?
Yes — Google documents that Google-InspectionTool honours robots.txt. A Disallow for the Google-InspectionTool token is respected.
Should I block Google-InspectionTool?
Almost certainly not. Disallowing Google-InspectionTool removes you from Google's search results, and because those same results feed Google's AI answers, you lose both at once.
If you want to stay in search but out of generative AI, that is a different token — see the training opt-out for Google in the related crawlers below. MetaPilot will not write a block for Google-InspectionTool from the dashboard for this reason.
Will blocking Google-InspectionTool hurt my traffic?
Blocking it breaks your own diagnostics: "Test live URL" and the Rich Results Test will fail on your site, and you lose the fastest way to confirm your structured data is being served. This is the one crawler where blocking hurts you and nobody else.
Ask an AI whether to block Google-InspectionTool