Does disabling ping/traceroute affect googlebot?

[stein]

Hi,

I have ordered a new server and the provider is recommending that ICMP protocol (ping / traceroute) on the server be disabled for security reasons.

Could this in any way effect googlebot / my sites ranking?

Thanks

[tedster]

This is a somewhat common practice and I've never heard of a problem. As far as I know, googlebot does not require either ping or tracert to be enabled on the web server and disabling them does provide a quick layer of protect against mailcious attacks.