GlossaryBot verification
What is bot verification?
Bot verification is checking that a request claiming to be a known bot really came from its operator, by comparing the request’s IP address with the addresses the operator publishes, or by reverse DNS when no list exists.
Also called: crawler verification, verified bot.
Verification produces one of four results for each request. Verified: the IP is inside the operator’s published ip ranges. Spoofed: the operator publishes ranges and the IP is outside them. Unverified: the operator publishes no ranges, so there is nothing to check. Not checked: the log has no usable client IP, or the address belongs to a proxy in front of the server.
Some operators publish one list for every crawler they run rather than one per agent. Anthropic and Google do this. A verified request then proves it came from that operator, carrying that name, which agenttraffic reports as Anthropic-origin or Google-origin.
Where no list exists, a few operators document reverse dns verification instead. Where neither exists, the honest answer is unverified, and the count is a floor of matching names.
Related terms
- Published IP ranges: Published IP ranges are the lists of IP addresses an operator makes public for its crawlers and agents, so site owners can confirm that a request wearing the operator’s name really came from them..
- Reverse DNS verification: Reverse DNS verification confirms a crawler by looking up the hostname for its IP address, checking that the hostname belongs to the operator’s domain, and then resolving that hostname forward to make sure it points back to the same IP..
- Spoofed user agent: A spoofed user agent is a request that claims to be a known bot, such as Googlebot or ChatGPT-User, but comes from an IP address outside the ranges that bot’s operator publishes.
Published 2026-09-21, updated 2026-09-21.