Storebot-Google user agent
Operated by Google
Storebot-Google is Google's crawler for product, cart and checkout pages used by Google Shopping surfaces.
The Storebot-Google bot at a glance
- Storebot-Google is operated by Google and crawls web pages for a search engine index.
- The robots.txt token for Storebot-Google is Storebot-Google.
- Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results.
- Storebot-Google robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is Storebot-Google?
Storebot-Google visits e-commerce pages to check product data, prices and availability for Google Shopping features.
Online stores that block it can lose shopping listings even when normal Search results stay.
Should you block Storebot-Google?
Allow Storebot-Google unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | AI features built on that search index, such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode on top of Googlebot, also lose access to your pages. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow Storebot-Google
Put the robots.txt rule in the file at the root of every domain and subdomain, for example https://example.com/robots.txt. The token Storebot-Google is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Storebot-Google
User-agent: Storebot-Google
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Storebot-Google
User-agent: Storebot-Google
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Storebot-Google out of private areas only
User-agent: Storebot-Google
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Storebot-Google
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Storebot\-Google)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Storebot-Google
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Storebot\-Google) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Storebot-Google")How to verify real Storebot-Google traffic
Google publishes the IP ranges that Storebot-Google uses. A request with the Storebot-Google user agent from an IP outside that list is an impersonator.
Official Storebot-Google IP list (JSON)
Reverse DNS check: look up the request IP, confirm the hostname ends in googlebot.com, then look up that hostname and confirm it returns the same IP.
# 1. Reverse lookup: the hostname must end in googlebot.com
host REQUEST_IP
# 2. Forward lookup: must return the same REQUEST_IP
host HOSTNAME_FROM_STEP_1How to find Storebot-Google in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Storebot-Google requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Storebot-Google" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.
Storebot-Google user agent string
The full user agent Google publishes for Storebot-Google. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; Storebot-Google/1.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36Storebot-Google FAQ
Storebot-Google identifies itself with the robots.txt token "Storebot-Google". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; Storebot-Google/1.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36
Yes. Google states that Storebot-Google follows robots.txt rules written for the "Storebot-Google" token.
Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results. AI features built on that search index, such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode on top of Googlebot, also lose access to your pages.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: Storebot-Google" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Yes. Google publishes the IP ranges Storebot-Google uses. Check the request IP against that list; a matching user agent from any other IP is an impersonator.
Search your server access log for "Storebot-Google", for example with: grep -i "Storebot-Google" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Google crawler documentation. Last reviewed by Justin Hà.
See which of these bots actually reach your website
The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers in your server log, for free. The GEO Technical Package sets up robots.txt, llms.txt and crawler access for AI search.
