Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How do I complete a reverse DNS check when completing log file analysis?
-
I'm doing some log file analysis and need to run a reverse DNS check to ensure that I'm analysing logs from Google and not any imposters. Is there a command I can use in terminal to do this?
If not, whats the best way to verify Googlebot?
Thanks
-
That's awesome! Glad to know there's a bulk tool out there!
-
Hi Tyler,
Thanks for your reply. I managed to get down to 98 unique IPs and ran a bulk reverse DNS/IP Look-up using this tool:
https://www.infobyip.com/ipbulklookup.php
Thanks for your help though!
-
Hey Daniel,
If you want to verify that a user-agent is actually Googlebot, you'll want to use a log file analysis tool to aggregate all of the IP addresses associated with Googlebot. Once you have a list of IP addresses, you can perform a reverse DNS lookup to verify whether the IP addresses are actually associated with Googlebot or not.
If you're on windows/pc these steps should work:
https://www.serverintellect.com/support/dns/reverse-dns/If you're on mac try these steps:
1. open Terminal
2. type "host" + ip address
for example: "host 66.249.66.1"
3. hit enter
4. view results. For example: "1.66.249.66.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer crawl-66-249-66-1.googlebot.com"If the results are from Google.com or Googlebot.com, you can be sure it's actually Google crawling your site. Unfortunately, I don't know of any faster ways to achieve these results. I'm sure there's a tool out there, I just haven't found it yet.
This might also be a good resource for you: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80553?hl=en
Good luck!
-Tyler
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does using a reverse proxy to make a subdomain appear as a subdirectory affect SEO?
Using a reverse proxy only makes it appear that a subdomain is really a subfolder. However, links in the end remain the same. Does this have any negative (or positive) impact on SEO? Does it make it difficult from the blog's (subdomain's) sitemap or robots.txt file to be properly read by search engines?
Technical SEO | Mar 19, 2020, 2:14 AM | rodelmo41 -
DNS vs IIS redirection
I'm working on a project where a site has gone through a rebrand and is therefore also moving to a new domain name. Some pages have been merged on the new site so it's not a lift and shift job and so I'm writing up a redirect plan. Their IT dept have asked if we want redirects done by DNS redirect or IIS redirect. Which one will allow us to have redirects on a page level and not a domain level? I think IIS may be the right route but would love your thoughts on this please.
Technical SEO | Feb 10, 2015, 4:30 PM | Marketing_Today1 -
How to check readability in testing mode
Hi, Is there a way to test if my content is readable while it is still in testing mode (meaning there obviously wont be a cache) Thanks!
Technical SEO | Feb 13, 2013, 6:55 AM | theLotter0 -
How can I find my Webmaster Tools HTML file?
So, totally amateur hour here, but I can't for the life of me find our HTML verification file for webmaster tools. I see nowhere to look at it in Google Webmaster Tools console, I tried a site:, I googled it, all the info out there is about how to verify a site. Ours is verified, but I need the verification file code to sync up with the Google API and no one seems to have it. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | Nov 8, 2012, 7:15 PM | healthgrades0 -
How do I check if my IP is blocked?
We changed servers and where our sites once ranked very highly (page 1 for all sites), they now are nowhere to be seen. Someone suggested that our IP might be blocked. Someone else suggested SEOMoz was the place to go to get it checked. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. With thanks. Bryan
Technical SEO | Jan 27, 2012, 2:58 AM | FortressLearning0 -
Changing DNS -- SEO implications?
Hey Moz, We're migrating an old site on an old server over to a new server/DNS. The plan is to keep the same URL structure and reuse our existing URL's. As long as we make minimal changes to each page's content, we should be able to update our DNS entry and get all the pages recreated and assigned to their correct URLs without any reduction in SEO rankings. Is this correct? This site gets a lot of organic traffic and ranks highly on some challenging keywords, so it's key that we retain our rankings as much as possible. I've read that it's wise to lower the DNS time-to-live to one hour, about a day before the move, to help Google crawl the DNS a little quicker. Are there any other recommendations you guys can offer or past experiences?
Technical SEO | Jul 31, 2014, 5:26 PM | stephen_reply0 -
Does Google index XML files?
Does Google or other search engines include XML files in their index? More specifically, I am wondering how Google knows the difference between an xml filetype and an RSS feed.
Technical SEO | Jul 7, 2011, 1:40 PM | nicole.healthline0 -
What tool do you use to check for URLs not indexed?
What is your favorite tool for getting a report of URLs that are not cached/indexed in Google & Bing for an entire site? Basically I want a list of URLs not cached in Google and a seperate list for Bing. Thanks, Mark
Technical SEO | Jun 23, 2024, 6:30 PM | elephantseo3