Google Crawling from China?
Most people involved in organic search in one way or another will know that Google's crawling infrastructure is located in the US. I came across a somewhat odd counter-example today. One tool on this site shows a user's IP address. I sometimes use this as a quick check of a Googlebot IP - since I can see the IP crawled from in the text snippet. Checking this out today, I came across an unusual IP in the snippet, which geo-locates to China:
My initial thought was that perhaps Google have some infrastructure in China for crawling now. So, whose IP is this? Apparently, it belongs to a company called China Mobile, seemingly a mobile internet operator. Stranger still, the site StopForumSpam, a way ofcollecting IP and other information on web spammers has extensive listings for the IP concerned, seemingly for comment spam.
Here's the full IP ownership info from APNIC:
% [whois.apnic.net] % Whois data copyright terms http://www.apnic.net/db/dbcopyright.html % Information related to '112.0.0.0 - 112.63.255.255' inetnum: 112.0.0.0 - 112.63.255.255 netname: CMNET descr: China Mobile Communications Corporation descr: Mobile Communications Network Operator in China descr: Internet Service Provider in China country: CN admin-c: lcj-AP tech-c: HL1318-AP remarks: service provider status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE mnt-by: APNIC-HM mnt-lower: MAINT-CN-CMCC mnt-routes: MAINT-CN-CMCC remarks: -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-++-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ remarks: This object can only be updated by APNIC hostmasters. remarks: To update this object, please contact APNIC remarks: hostmasters and include your organisation's account remarks: name in the subject line. remarks: -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-++-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ changed: [email protected]apnic.net 20081215 source: APNIC
So, how on earth has this IP ended up as part of a Google crawl?
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