Overview
DuplexWeb-Google was a special-purpose automation fetcher operated by Google for the retired Duplex on the web service.
Its documented HTTP User-Agent contained DuplexWeb-Google/1.0, and its robots token was DuplexWeb-Google.
Google lists the identity as retired. It could ignore rules addressed only to the global * robots group.
The record is retained for historical server-log matching. A matching User-Agent should not be treated as current Google traffic without independent source verification.
Identity
- User-Agent Pattern
-
DuplexWeb-Google/1.0 - Aliases
- Duplex on the web; DuplexWeb-Google
- HTTP Agent Examples
-
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 11; Pixel 2; DuplexWeb-Google/1.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/86.0.4240.193 Mobile Safari/537.36 - Robots Token
- DuplexWeb-Google
- Identity Type
- Officially documented
- Evidence Method
- Google lists DuplexWeb-Google 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 reverse DNS and published special-crawler network ranges where records remain available.
Classification
- Type
- Automation
- Kind
- Agent
- Family
- Operator
- Company
- Purpose
- User-triggered automation
Behavior and handling
- Common Use
- Historically supported Google’s Duplex on the web automation service.
- Detection Notes
- Detect the `DuplexWeb-Google/1.0` substring in historical logs. Google lists the identity as retired, so current requests using the string require additional scrutiny.
- Respects robots.txt
- Depends
- Spoofing Risk
- High for current traffic because the identity is retired and the User-Agent can be copied.
- Risk
- Neutral
- Recommended Handling
- Monitor
Rules and controls
- Robots.txt Snippet
-
# Retired identity retained for historical matching. User-agent: DuplexWeb-Google Disallow: /