How to block Google StoreBot
Operated by Google. The Google StoreBot is a search-engine-based program that automatically 'crawls' through web pages to gather and analyse data. Google uses crawlers that go through product pages and checkout processes using machine learning algorithms to fill in forms with information such as delivery addresses, and help compile other information on price, delivery, payments and more.
How it identifies itself
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; Storebot-Google/1.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/79.0.3945.88 Safari/537.36
robots.txt
What the agent asks to be told. It obeys this or it does not — nothing enforces it.
User-agent: Storebot-Google Disallow: /
nginx
In the server block, then reload.
# In the server block. 403 rather than 444: a closed connection tells the
# operator nothing, and an agent that gets a status code can log it.
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Storebot-Google|Google StoreBot)") {
return 403;
}
Apache
In .htaccess or the vhost.
BrowserMatchNoCase "Storebot-Google" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "Google StoreBot" bad_bot
<RequireAll>
Require all granted
Require not env bad_bot
</RequireAll>
Cloudflare
Security → WAF → Custom rules.
# Security → WAF → Custom rules, action: Block (http.user_agent contains "Storebot-Google") or (http.user_agent contains "Google StoreBot")
WordPress
A child theme's functions.php, or a small plugin.
// functions.php of a child theme, or a small plugin. Runs before WordPress
// builds the page, so a blocked agent costs one PHP process and no queries.
add_action('init', function () {
$agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
foreach (['Storebot-Google', 'Google StoreBot'] as $needle) {
if (stripos($agent, $needle) !== false) {
status_header(403);
exit('Blocked: Google StoreBot');
}
}
});
robots.txt is a request. The rules below it are the wall.
Google StoreBot publishes a token, so the directive above will work for as long as it keeps honouring it — and nothing except its own good manners makes it. The server rules match on a header the requester sets, which stops the agent that says who it is and not the one that copies somebody else's name. Botscope verifies identity against DNS and published address ranges, records which check decided each request, and shows you the ones that lied.