Google-InspectionTool
Google-InspectionTool is the crawler Google uses when a webmaster manually triggers the URL Inspection tool or the Rich Results Test in Search Console. Unlike automatic crawlers, it only runs when a person initiates it — it is not part of Google's regular indexing process. Its role is diagnostic: it helps surface accessibility and indexing issues on your site. It has no direct effect on Google Search rankings, though fixing the problems it uncovers can help other Google crawlers read your content more reliably.
- User-agent
Google-InspectionToolMozilla/5.0 (compatible; Google-InspectionTool/1.0;)- Does it respect robots.txt?
- Partially
- Official documentation
- https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-common-crawlers
How to allow it in your robots.txt
User-agent: Google-InspectionTool
Allow: /How to block it (not recommended)
User-agent: Google-InspectionTool
Disallow: /Frequently asked questions
Should I block Google-InspectionTool?
There is no good reason to. This bot only visits your site when you — or someone with Search Console access — manually runs an inspection. Blocking it would just make it harder to diagnose issues on your own pages, with no upside.
Does it affect my Google ranking or AI visibility?
Not directly. It is a diagnostic tool, not a ranking signal. That said, if it surfaces accessibility problems and you fix them, other Google crawlers will be able to read your content more reliably, which can positively influence your overall search and AI visibility over time.
How can I tell if it has visited my site?
Look for «Google-InspectionTool» in your server logs or your hosting or CDN dashboard, such as Cloudflare. Because it only runs on manual request from Search Console, you will not see it as frequently as automatic crawlers like Googlebot.