Official Googlebot IP Addresses Now Available In JSON File

Last month Google posted two different JSON files with the list of IP addresses Google can use to crawl your site.

File #1 enables you to match the crawler's IP address to the list of Googlebot IP addresses in the file in order to identify Googlebot by IP address.

File #2 enables you to identify all other Google crawlers by matching the crawler's IP address against the complete list of Google IP addresses.

Until now we've been using reverse DNS to identify Google's bots. When Google's John Mueller was asked why now?, he responded on twitter saying...

It makes it a bit easier for some sites (CDNs, etc), and the old issues / risks around cloaking seem to have mostly gone away, so Why Not?

• Actionable Strategy — It's safe to assume these IP addresses may change from time to time, so we recommend you check the JSON files reguarly for updates if you've automated scripts to use this IP list.

  In addition, be aware there are other methods to verify Googlebot and other crawlers which you can learn about by going here.