Does ProjectShield Url Check respect robots.txt rules?

According to official documentation, ProjectShield Url Check does not respect robots.txt rules.

How can I verify ProjectShield Url Check traffic with live traffic data?

You can verify ProjectShield Url Check requests by checking your server access logs for the documented user-agent strings. For accurate verification, correlate user-agent patterns with IP ranges or verification methods provided by Google.

What is ProjectShield Url Check?

Direct Answer: ProjectShield Url Check bot operated by Google for security purposes, providing DDoS attack protection.

Operator: Google Type: Security Scanner Purpose: DDoS attack detection and protection

Project Shield, created by Google Cloud and Jigsaw and powered by Google Cloud Armor, provides free unlimited protection against DDoS attacks. The bot, known as ProjectShield-UrlCheck, checks URLs for potential threats. It is part of Google's effort to protect websites from digital attacks used to censor information.

User-Agent Identification

The following user-agent strings identify ProjectShield Url Check in your live traffic data:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; ProjectShield-UrlCheck; +http://g.co/projectshield)

robots.txt Rules for ProjectShield Url Check

Respects robots.txt: No

This bot does not commit to following robots.txt

ProjectShield Url Check does not officially follow robots.txt directives. The only reliable way to control access is through server-side blocking (IP filtering, user-agent rules in your web server config) combined with log monitoring to verify effectiveness.

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Crawl Behavior

Frequency:Not Documented

Request Pattern:Not Documented

Official Documentation Quotes

"provides free unlimited protection against DDoS attacks, a type of digital attack used to censor information by taking websites offline"
Source:Official Documentation

Crawl Activity Index

Relative crawl activity for ProjectShield Url Check over the past 28 days. Higher values indicate increased crawling intensity compared to the period baseline.

View recent activity data (last 7 days)

Date	Activity Index
Mar 26, 2026	88.0
Mar 27, 2026	82.7
Mar 28, 2026	83.1
Mar 29, 2026	81.8
Mar 30, 2026	87.3
Mar 31, 2026	90.2
Apr 1, 2026	88.8

Source: Cloudflare Radar

Why track ProjectShield Url Check traffic?

Identify and classify unknown crawler activity. ProjectShield Url Check may appear in your live traffic data with varying frequency. Tracking its behavior helps you decide whether to allow, throttle, or block it based on actual data.

Protect your crawl budget. Every bot request consumes server resources. Understanding what ProjectShield Url Check crawls helps you prioritize the crawlers that matter.

Log Verification

To verify ProjectShield Url Check traffic in your live traffic data:

Search access logs for the user-agent strings listed above
Check if the IP addresses match documented ranges (if provided by Google)
Verify the crawl pattern matches documented behavior
Use reverse DNS lookup for additional verification if available

Note: Observed behavior in production environments may differ from official documentation. Live traffic monitoring provides the only reliable verification of actual bot behavior.

Undocumented Information

The following information is not officially documented for ProjectShield Url Check:

crawl frequency
request pattern
IP verification method
JavaScript rendering details

Official Documentation

View Official ProjectShield Url Check Documentation →

Information sourced from official documentation. Content generated with AI assistance.