Tracking Google and Googlebot Using PHP
by Mitch Keeler

No one alive can deny the force of Google and how powerful it has become in the Web design and Web hosting business. Many people work for hours and hours, days and days to make sure the Web site they have is ready for Google and it's Googlebot whenever it might come for a visit.

The problem most folks run into though is how do you know it is there? Some forum and blogging scripts come with better ways to track bots as they comb through your pages. What about everyone else though? Well this is where these scripts come in. All you need is to be able to parse PHP through your Web site and you too can track the Googlebot even better.

I am not totally sure who wrote these PHP scripts up first, but I have not seen it talked about many places at all. Hopefully this will a handy tool for you to use

Easy Version

With this version of the script you need to replace the "yourdomainname.com" with your own domain name and replace "you@youremail.com" with your E-mail address.

<?
if(eregi("googlebot",$HTTP_USER_AGENT))
{
mail("you@youremail.com", "Googlebot detected on yourdomainname.com", "Google has crawled yourdomainname.com");
}
?>

Expert Version

This version is a little more advanced. Here all you need to do is replace "you@youremail.com" with your E-mail address. The script will do the rest of the work. It will let you know which page date and time it was crawled as well.

<?
if(eregi("googlebot",$HTTP_USER_AGENT))
{
if ($QUERY_STRING != "")
{$url = "http://".$SERVER_NAME.$PHP_SELF.'?'.$QUERY_STRING;}
else
{$url = "http://".$SERVER_NAME.$PHP_SELF;}
$today = date("F j, Y, g:i a");
mail("you@youremail.com", "Googlebot detected on http://$SERVER_NAME", "$today - Google crawled $url");
}
?>

Hopefully this will be of some use to people working on their Web sites who want to keep a better eye on where the Googlebot is looking at.