01 · Operator
Who operates Google-Safety
- Company
- Type
- Monitoring bot
- Official docs
- developers.google.com
02 · Behavior
What Google-Safety does
It handles abuse-specific crawling, such as malware discovery for links posted publicly on Google properties. Google states that it ignores robots.txt rules. Requests come from Google's special-crawler IP ranges.
03 · Impact
Why Google-Safety matters for your site
If you allow it
- Helps Google detect malware and abuse
- Blocking via robots.txt has no effect
- Verified requests come from Google
If you block it
- Unverified requests may be fakes using the name
- Firewall blocking only, since robots.txt is ignored
04 · Allow
How to allow Google-Safety
robots.txt
User-agent: Google-Safety
Allow: /
Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Google-Safety")
Action: Skip › All Super Bot Fight Mode rules
# Also check Security › Bots: "Block AI bots" can block it regardless of robots.txt.
WordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: Google-Safety
Allow: /
nginx
# nginx serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure no rule like this blocks it:
# if ($http_user_agent ~* "Google\-Safety") { return 403; }
Apache
# Apache serves every user agent by default.
# Make sure .htaccess has no rule like this:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Google\-Safety [NC]
# RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
05 · Block
How to block Google-Safety
Google-Safety has been reported to ignore robots.txt. Block it at your CDN or web server as well.
robots.txt
# Google-Safety has been reported to ignore robots.txt.
# Add a Cloudflare, nginx or Apache rule as well.
User-agent: Google-Safety
Disallow: /
Cloudflare
# Security › WAF › Custom rules › Create rule
Expression: (http.user_agent contains "Google-Safety")
Action: Block
WordPress
# WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt. Edit it with your SEO plugin:
# Yoast: SEO › Tools › File editor · Rank Math: General Settings › Edit robots.txt
User-agent: Google-Safety
Disallow: /
nginx
# In your server { } block:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Google\-Safety") {
return 403;
}
Apache
# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Google\-Safety [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>
06 · User agents
User agents we see for Google-Safety
| User agent | Share | Last active | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
Google-Safety |
60% | 4 days ago | Verified |
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chr… |
40% | 4 days ago | Verified |
07 · Verification
Is it really Google-Safety?
Anyone can copy a user agent. Real Google-Safety requests come from the IP ranges published at developers.google.com/static/crawling/ipranges/special-crawlers.json. A reverse DNS lookup of a real request resolves to google.com, and that hostname resolves back to the same IP.
IP addresses we saw from verified Google-Safety requests
| IP range | Share | Last active |
|---|---|---|
66.249.83.0/27 |
60% | 4 days ago |
66.249.89.0/27 |
40% | 4 days ago |
Always check against the operator’s current list; ranges change.
FAQ
Questions about Google-Safety
What is Google-Safety?
It is a Google crawler for abuse detection, such as finding malware in links posted on Google properties.
Does Google-Safety respect robots.txt?
No. Google documents that the Google-Safety user agent ignores robots.txt rules.
How can I verify Google-Safety?
Check the IP against Google's special-crawlers.json list, or run a reverse DNS lookup that resolves to rate-limited-proxy-*.google.com.
Last updated Oct 8, 2026