Google-Safety
Google •
Web Crawler
What is Google-Safety?
Google lists Google-Safety among its special-case crawlers and says it handles abuse-specific work, such as malware discovery for publicly posted links on Google properties. It is not Googlebot and does not index pages for ordinary Search results. Google states that this identity ignores robots.txt rules, so adding a Disallow group will not control these safety requests. Verify a suspicious claim with Google's published special-crawler IP ranges.
User Agent String
Google-Safety
How to Control Google-Safety
Block Completely
To prevent Google-Safety from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block Google-Safety
User-agent: Google-Safety
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: Google-Safety
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /public/
Set Crawl Delay
To slow down the crawl rate (note: not all bots respect this directive):
User-agent: Google-Safety
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify Google-Safety
Verification Method:
Compare the source IP with Google's special-crawlers.json ranges or use Google's forward-confirmed reverse-DNS process.
Compare the source IP with Google's special-crawlers.json ranges or use Google's forward-confirmed reverse-DNS process.
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect Google-Safety in your application:
Basic Pattern
/Google\-Safety/i
Strict Pattern
/^Google\-Safety$/
Flexible Pattern
/Google\-Safety[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/i
Vendor Match
/.*Google.*Google\-Safety/i
Implementation Examples
// PHP Detection for Google-Safety
function detect_google_safety() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/Google\-Safety/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('Google-Safety detected from IP: ' . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
// Set cache headers
header('Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600');
header('X-Robots-Tag: noarchive');
// Optional: Serve cached version
if (file_exists('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html')) {
readfile('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for Google-Safety
import re
from flask import request, make_response
def detect_google_safety():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'Google\-Safety'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False
# Django Middleware
class google_safetyMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for Google-Safety
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
// Middleware to detect Google-Safety
function detect_google_safety(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /Google\-Safety/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('Google-Safety detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'Google-Safety';
}
next();
}
app.use(detect_google_safety);
# Apache .htaccess rules for Google-Safety
# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Google\-Safety [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Google\-Safety [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]
# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "Google\-Safety" is_bot=1
# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Google\-Safety/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for Google-Safety
# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_google_safety {
default 0;
~*Google\-Safety 1;
}
server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_google_safety) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_google_safety) {
root /var/www/cached;
try_files $uri $uri.html $uri/index.html @backend;
}
try_files $uri @backend;
}
# Add headers for bot requests
location @backend {
if ($is_google_safety) {
add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600";
add_header X-Robots-Tag "noarchive";
}
proxy_pass http://backend;
}
}
Should You Block This Bot?
Recommendations based on your website type:
| Site Type | Recommendation | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | Optional | Evaluate based on bandwidth usage vs. benefits |
| Blog/News | Allow | Increases content reach and discoverability |
| SaaS Application | Block | No benefit for application interfaces; preserve resources |
| Documentation | Selective | Allow for public docs, block for internal docs |
| Corporate Site | Limit | Allow for public pages, block sensitive areas like intranets |
Advanced robots.txt Configurations
E-commerce Site Configuration
User-agent: Google-Safety
Crawl-delay: 5
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /*?sort=
Disallow: /*?filter=
Disallow: /*&page=
Allow: /products/
Allow: /categories/
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
Publishing/Blog Configuration
User-agent: Google-Safety
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: Google-Safety
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
Google-Safety
Robots.txt Name
Google-Safety
Category
security
Respects robots.txt
May not respect
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