Google has updated the help document named How to fix: Google StoreBot crawler can’t access your in-store product page. The document has a number of big updates with a lot of clarifications including the user-agents, checking robots.txt, blocking IP addresses, page speed issues, reprocessing and how long it takes for your landing pages to be reprocessed.
Google wrote in the updated document, "Once accessibility is restored, it typically takes 12 to 48 hours for the system to reflect these changes and for products to be approved." Google said this "time allows us to verify that we can crawl the landing pages that are provided, after which the products will start showing up in your local inventory ads again."
Google then documented the common ways merchants use to block Google's crawlers (including StoreBot, Googlebot, and Googlebot-image) which include robots.txt, user-agent switching, blocking IP addresses, firewall blocking, fingerprinting and page load speed issues.
Here are all the documented changes from the old version to the new version of this page:
If you use Google Merchant Center, this is worth a read.
Forum discussion at X.
