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Crawler simulator

Googlebot Simulator & Tester

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Simulate a Googlebot visit to any URL on your website. Crawl as Googlebot Smartphone, Googlebot Desktop, or 12 other Google crawlers, then inspect the status code, headers, and HTML Google gets.

SIMULATE

Simulate a Googlebot visit

Enter any URL on your website to crawl it as Googlebot and inspect the HTML it gets.

How it works

How to use the Googlebot simulator

  1. Step 1

    Enter a URL

    Paste the full URL of any page on your website, such as a product page, a blog post, or the home page.

  2. Step 2

    Select the Googlebot user agent

    The tester sends the request with the Googlebot user-agent string, so your server answers the way it answers a real Googlebot visit.

  3. Step 3

    Run the crawl

    The simulator requests the page as Googlebot and follows redirects, the same way the crawler does.

  4. Step 4

    Inspect the HTML

    Check the status code, redirects, response headers, raw HTML, word count, and Open Graph tags Googlebot gets. If your main content is missing from the HTML, Googlebot cannot read it.

Overview

What is Googlebot?

Googlebot is the crawler that finds and indexes pages for Google Search, and its index is the source for AI Overviews. Google crawls most sites with Googlebot Smartphone and uses Googlebot Desktop for some pages. Google also runs other crawlers, such as the URL Inspection tool, GoogleOther, and the AI Overview renderer. This Googlebot tester can crawl any URL on your website as any of these 14 Google crawlers and shows the HTML each one gets.

Why allow it

Why allow Googlebot?

Improve rankings in Google Search results
Get featured in Google's AI Overview answers
Diagnose why pages aren't being indexed
Test mobile-first indexing compatibility
Verify JavaScript content is rendered for Google
Debug crawl errors and accessibility issues
Robots.txt

Googlebot robots.txt configuration

Control how Googlebot crawls your website using robots.txt directives. Add these rules to your robots.txt file at the root of your domain, then run the simulator again on the same URL to confirm the change.

Allow Googlebot

# Allow Googlebot (recommended for most sites)
User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /

# Also allow Google's other crawlers
User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

User-agent: GoogleOther
Allow: /

Block Googlebot

# Block Googlebot (not recommended)
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

# Block Google's AI training crawler only
User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /

User-Agent String: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

Googlebot simulator FAQ

Enter any URL from your website in the tester above and run the crawl. The simulator requests the page with the Googlebot user-agent string and shows the status code, response headers, and raw HTML it gets. Inspect the HTML to confirm your main content, title, and meta tags are there before any JavaScript runs.

A Googlebot simulator, or Googlebot tester, requests a URL with Googlebot's user agent string and shows you the response: status code, redirects, response headers, and the raw HTML. It shows what Google gets when it crawls the page, before any JavaScript runs.

Test Googlebot Smartphone first. Google uses mobile-first indexing, so it crawls most websites with the smartphone crawler. Also test Googlebot Desktop if your website serves different HTML to desktop visitors.

No. The URL Inspection tool only works on websites you have verified in Search Console. This simulator works on any URL, including a competitor's page. It sends the request with Google's user agent from our servers, not from Google's, so it cannot show whether the page is in Google's index.

Googlebot is the crawler for Google Search. Blocking it removes you from search results. Google-Extended is not a separate crawler: it is a robots.txt token that controls whether Google may use your content for Gemini and AI training. You can disallow Google-Extended and still appear in Google Search.

Yes, Googlebot can render JavaScript, but with delays. Initial crawl sees raw HTML, then pages enter a render queue. This can delay indexing of JavaScript content by hours or days. For faster, more reliable indexing, serve pre-rendered HTML or use server-side rendering.

Common reasons: 1) robots.txt blocking Googlebot, 2) noindex meta tags, 3) JavaScript content not rendering, 4) crawl budget issues, 5) low-quality content, 6) site not submitted to Search Console. Our simulator helps identify technical crawling issues.

To appear in AI Overview: 1) Ensure Googlebot can crawl your content, 2) Create comprehensive, authoritative content, 3) Use structured data markup, 4) Have fast page load times, 5) Build topical authority. The same content that ranks well organically tends to be cited in AI Overview.

Crawl frequency depends on your site's authority, update frequency, and server capacity. High-authority news sites may be crawled every few minutes, while smaller sites might be crawled weekly. Check Google Search Console for your actual crawl stats.
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Make your site crawlable

JavaScript sites often have indexing issues. Encited pre-renders your SPA into crawler-friendly HTML so Googlebot and other bots can read your content.

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