GlossarySpoofed user agent
What is 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. It is a scraper or scanner borrowing a trusted name.
Also called: spoofed bot, fake bot, bot impersonation.
Spoofing is common because many sites give known crawlers special treatment: fewer rate limits, no CAPTCHA, or paywall access. Googlebot has been impersonated for years, and ChatGPT-User is now one of the most borrowed names in server logs.
agenttraffic reports a request as spoofed only when the operator publishes IP addresses and the request is outside them. When an operator publishes nothing, the request is unverified, which is a different thing: there was nothing to check against. The two are never added together.
A spoofed request does not count toward the agent it imitates. Seeing spoofed requests on an agent’s row is normal; only the verified number is a floor of the real thing.
Related terms
- 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..
- 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..
- User agent string: A user agent string is the text a client sends with every web request to say what it is.
- Floor: A floor is a count reported as "at least this many": the number that could be measured, with the acknowledgement that the true number may be higher.
Published 2026-09-21, updated 2026-09-21.