Google-Adwords-Instant is a bot in the SEO crawlers category, operated by Google.
Google-Adwords-Instant is a bot connected to the Google Ads platform. It visits advertiser landing pages to perform verification and quality checks.
SEO crawlers map links, keywords and technical issues for SEO tools and backlink databases. They help the tool's customers, often your competitors, rather than you. Rate limit or block the ones you do not use.
Sample user agent strings sent by Google-Adwords-Instant:
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/156.0.8078.47 Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Google-Adwords-Instant-Mobile; +http://www.google.com/mobile/adsbot.html)Google-Adwords-Instant (+http://www.google.com/adsbot.html)Anyone can copy a user agent string. Transfon Security also checks where each request comes from, so a request that claims to be a known crawler but comes from the wrong network is treated as a fake, not as the real crawler.
Share of Google-Adwords-Instant requests to sites protected by Transfon Security in the 7 days to 27 October 2026.
| United States | 100% |
| Google LLC AS15169 | 100% |
Genuine Google-Adwords-Instant IPs resolve to hostnames ending in google.com. Run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP, then a forward lookup on the hostname, and check both match:
host 203.0.113.10 # the IP from your logs host crawl-name.google.com # must return the same IP
We have not confirmed whether Google-Adwords-Instant follows robots.txt. Add a rule, then check your logs to see that it stopped. robots.txt is a plain text file at the root of your domain, such as https://example.com/robots.txt.
User-agent: Google-Adwords-Instant Disallow: /
User-agent: Google-Adwords-Instant Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /search
User-agent: Google-Adwords-Instant Allow: /blog/ Disallow: /
User-agent: Google-Adwords-Instant Allow: / User-agent: * Disallow: /
User-agent: Google-Adwords-Instant group, Google-Adwords-Instant ignores your User-agent: * rules, so repeat any that should still apply.Google-Adwords-Instant from Google-Adwords-Instant's user agent; check Google's own documentation if it publishes a different robots.txt name.Treat robots.txt as a statement of your policy, and enforce it where requests arrive.
Google-Adwords-Instant works for an SEO tool's customers, often your competitors. It adds server load without readers, so rate limit or block it unless you use the tool.
Transfon Security for publishersSEO crawlers map landing pages and links for competitor research. Keep Google-Adwords-Instant's visits out of campaign data.
Transfon Security for advertisersGoogle-Adwords-Instant can map your catalogue, prices and site structure for competitors. Block it unless you use the tool yourself.
Transfon Security for e-commerceAllow Google-Adwords-Instant only if your team uses the tool; otherwise rate limit it on docs and marketing pages.
Transfon Security for SaaS and APIsrobots.txt is a request, not an enforcement. Transfon Security shows Google-Adwords-Instant by name in the Top Bots report, so you can see how often it visits and which pages it reads. Block or allow it with a User Agent rule, or slow it down with a rate limit decision rule.
Transfon Security
Google-Adwords-Instant is a bot in the SEO crawlers category, operated by Google. Google-Adwords-Instant is a bot connected to the Google Ads platform. It visits advertiser landing pages to perform verification and quality checks.
We have not confirmed whether Google-Adwords-Instant follows robots.txt. Add a robots.txt rule, then check your logs to see that it stopped, and block it by user agent if it did not.
Add "User-agent: Google-Adwords-Instant" followed by "Disallow: /" to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. To enforce it, block requests whose user agent contains "Google-Adwords-Instant" at your WAF. In Transfon Security that is one User Agent block rule.
No. robots.txt is voluntary, so Google-Adwords-Instant may not follow it, and anyone can send Google-Adwords-Instant's user agent, so a fake Google-Adwords-Instant ignores your rule. Enforce the rule where requests arrive, at your WAF, and check the source network.
Run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP. Genuine Google-Adwords-Instant IPs resolve to a hostname ending in google.com, and a forward lookup of that hostname returns the same IP. Anything else using its user agent is an impersonator.
SEO crawlers map links, keywords and technical issues for SEO tools and backlink databases. They help the tool's customers, often your competitors, rather than you. Rate limit or block the ones you do not use.
Transfon Security identifies every bot in this directory in your traffic reports, flags fake search crawlers, and lets you allow, block or rate limit each bot.
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