Learn the core IPBot distinction between a crawler that is merely known from range intelligence and one that is fully verified from stronger evidence.
Known and verified are not cosmetic labels. They express the quality of evidence behind the classification, which is exactly what site owners need when deciding whether to allow a request, rate-limit it, or hold it for review.
IPBot uses the source inventory below to decide whether a request is merely known or fully verified.
Swipe sideways to review every verification column.
| Crawler | Intent | Verification | CIDRs | Freshness |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Googlebot
Official source
| search | Reverse + forward DNS | 311
IPv4 167 / IPv6 144 | 2026-05-22 |
| GPTBot
Official source
| training | User-agent + official IP range | 21
IPv4 21 / IPv6 0 | 2025-10-30 |
Use `verified` when the strongest available evidence succeeds, use `known but unverified` when only range or partial evidence exists, and reserve `not known` for IPs outside the tracked crawler inventory.
`robots.txt` can express intent, but it does not prove that a request really belongs to a crawler. Pair policy with verification evidence.
Build WAF logic around evidence quality. Verified crawler traffic usually deserves different handling from traffic that only looks crawler-like by user-agent or range membership.
Standard `Googlebot` controls apply through `robots.txt` and search indexing directives.
Safe to treat as a verified crawler when reverse and forward DNS both succeed.
Use the `GPTBot` token in `robots.txt` when deciding whether to allow OpenAI training crawl access.
Do not rely on IP range alone; pair the IP with the expected user-agent token before treating it as verified.
It means the IP is in IPBot's tracked crawler range inventory, but the request does not yet have enough additional evidence to be called verified.
The answer depends on the crawler family. Google and Bing use reverse plus forward DNS, while OpenAI-family crawlers need both official range membership and a matching crawler user-agent token.