Overview
AdsBot-Google-Mobile-Apps was a special-purpose advertising crawler operated by Google to check Android app page ad quality.
Its exact HTTP User-Agent and robots token were AdsBot-Google-Mobile-Apps.
Google lists the identity as retired. It obeyed rules addressed to AdsBot-Google but ignored the global * group.
The identity is retained for historical server-log and robots-policy matching.
Identity
- User-Agent Pattern
-
AdsBot-Google-Mobile-Apps - Aliases
- Google Mobile Apps Android AdsBot
- HTTP Agent Examples
-
AdsBot-Google-Mobile-Apps - Robots Token
- AdsBot-Google-Mobile-Apps
- Identity Type
- Officially documented
- Evidence Method
- Google lists AdsBot-Google-Mobile-Apps as a retired special-case crawler at https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-special-case-crawlers. For historical traffic, corroborate the User-Agent with Google-controlled network and reverse-DNS evidence.
Classification
- Type
- Advertising
- Kind
- Crawler
- Family
- Operator
- Company
- Purpose
- Ad quality
Behavior and handling
- Common Use
- Historically checked Android app pages for Google Ads ad quality.
- Detection Notes
- Detect the exact `AdsBot-Google-Mobile-Apps` User-Agent in historical logs. Google lists the identity as retired.
- Respects robots.txt
- Depends
- Spoofing Risk
- High for current traffic because the identity is retired and the User-Agent can be copied.
- Risk
- Safe
- Recommended Handling
- Depends
Rules and controls
- Robots.txt Snippet
-
# Retired identity; historically followed AdsBot-Google rules rather than the global * group. User-agent: AdsBot-Google-Mobile-Apps Disallow: /