Google has just added a new crawler to its official documentation: GoogleBot Messages. This bot's mission is to generate link previews when you share a URL in the Google Messages app.
Key takeaways:
- Google Messages now has its own crawler identifiable by the User-Agent "GoogleMessages".
- This fetcher automatically generates visual previews of links shared in conversations
- Adding it to the documentation allows site owners to identify and analyze this new type of traffic.
A new crawler for link previews
Google has officially documented this new crawler in its list of "user-triggered fetchers" (crawlers triggered by the user), such as NoteBookLM and Google-CWS. Concretely, when you send a link to a contact via Google Messages, it is this bot that will retrieve the information necessary to display a rich preview: title, description and preview image.
The HTTP User-Agent of this crawler is simply identified as "GoogleMessages", which allows webmasters to easily spot it in their server logs.
Why this announcement now
According to Google, the update to the documentation aims to help website owners better understand the source of their traffic. By clearly identifying requests coming from Google Messages, they can distinguish this automated traffic from actual user visits and adjust their analytics accordingly. This transparency is in line with Google's usual approach of documenting all its crawling bots to make management easier for web administrators.
The article “Google Messages joins the family of User-Triggered Fetchers” was published on the site Abondance.
