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    4. How do I complete a reverse DNS check when completing log file analysis?

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    How do I complete a reverse DNS check when completing log file analysis?

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    • daniel-brooks
      daniel-brooks Subscriber last edited by

      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

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • TylerReardon
        TylerReardon @daniel-brooks last edited by

        That's awesome! Glad to know there's a bulk tool out there!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • daniel-brooks
          daniel-brooks Subscriber @TylerReardon last edited by

          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!

          TylerReardon 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • TylerReardon
            TylerReardon last edited by

            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

            daniel-brooks 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
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