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How to be notified if a website is crawled by Google?

1.59/5 (10 votes)
9 Sep 2006CPOL1 min read 1  
This article explains a code snippet on how to receive a notification when Google hits a website.

Introduction

It was always a question to me how to be notified when a search engine robot like Google's reaches a website. On the other hand, I was wondering about receiving a notification as soon as Google explores my website.

I spent sometime on Google and searched the internet to see if I could find a trick or technique to employ to receive a notification once my website is hit by Google itself. The question is not why it is important to know when a website is crawled by Google, but how to achieve this goal?!

Code Snippet

First of all, please don't expect this article to describe an algorithm or a lengthy sample code. This is only a small but useful technique. I ran into the following PHP code snippet in PHP on a weblog somewhere on the internet:

PHP
if ( strpos( $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'Googlebot' ) !== false )
{
    // The email address we want to send the email to
    $email_address = 'MyName@MyDomain.com';

    mail($emai_address,'Google bot','The website is hit by google now.',
         'from@MyDomain.com');
}

In the body of the above 'if' statement, an email is sent to MyName@MyDomain.com once the website is hit by Google. We can even send a notification to cell phones too if Google reaches a website. All we need is to substitute the code inside the 'if' block with a instructions to trigger an SMS to a cell phone via web, as it is described in this weblog.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)