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Most all SEOs know that Google's search spider, GoogleBot, crawls from Mountain View, California.
So when a webmaster asked in a Google Webmaster Help thread why GoogleBot is crawling from China as opposed to from California, some Googlers began scratching their heads.
It turned out that there was some sort of bug that Google fixed to stop GoogleBot from appearing to be crawling from China.
JohnMu of Google said:
It looks like that was a temporary quirk and shouldn't be happening anymore :). Thanks for pinging us!
This can be a serious issue for many sites because I know of many sites that outright block Chinese IP addresses from accessing their web sites. And if Google crawls from China and you are blocking China, then you are blocking Google from accessing, crawling, indexing and ranking your site in Google.
It is weird to me that this would happen but it was also weird to Google.
I am not sure how wide spread it was but this is the first complaint I have seen on this topic.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
Comments:
UK Cloud hosting Services
03/10/2011 06:11 pm
Seems that Google may fix that problem and no need of china content.
partnership agreement
03/11/2011 09:39 am
Google Boat Perform weird activities.. Agreed with you Barry that it could be a serious issues from those webmasters who already Blocked Chinese IP addresses..
Website Designer Riyadh
03/11/2011 11:38 am
It is easy to find out that bugs.. Very useful tool.. Aluminium Kozijnen
Test
01/06/2012 10:42 am
A google bot originating from China crawled my site today.
SEOFloat
11/02/2012 11:16 am
This is an interesting information..... Keep updating your blog. Thanks a lot for the share.... Thanks!