Overview
googleweblight was a user-triggered fetcher operated by Google for the retired Web Light service.
Its documented mobile browser User-Agent contained the token googleweblight.
Google states that the fetcher was used only for explicit browse requests from human visitors and therefore ignored robots.txt. It checked for the no-transform header before transforming eligible pages.
The identity is retained for historical server-log matching.
Identity
- User-Agent Pattern
-
googleweblight - Aliases
- Google Web Light; Web Light user-triggered fetcher
- HTTP Agent Examples
-
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.2.1; en-us; Nexus 5 Build/JOP40D) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko; googleweblight) Chrome/38.0.1025.166 Mobile Safari/535.19 - Robots Token
- googleweblight
- Identity Type
- Officially documented
- Evidence Method
- Google lists googleweblight as a retired special-case fetcher at https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-special-case-crawlers. The User-Agent is retained for historical detection and should not be treated as current authenticated Google traffic.
Classification
- Type
- Preview
- Kind
- Fetcher
- Family
- Operator
- Company
- Purpose
- User-triggered fetch
Behavior and handling
- Common Use
- Historically fetched and transformed pages after explicit human browse requests through Google Web Light.
- Detection Notes
- Detect the `googleweblight` token inside the historical mobile browser User-Agent. Google lists the service as retired.
- Respects robots.txt
- No
- 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
-
# This retired user-triggered fetcher ignored robots.txt; use application or network controls if needed.