Why is adsbot crawling?

why is it crawling?

[lucy24]

:: looking around uneasily because this is unfamiliar territory ::

Can someone explain in words of two syllables what this robot is looking for?

72.14.199.209 - - [07/Oct/2013:19:21:33 -0700] "GET /fonts/custom_greek_it.html HTTP/1.1" 200 6008 "-" "AdsBot-Google (+http://www.google.com/adsbot.html)" 

The URL in the UA redirects to "Understanding landing page experience" which is, as far as I can make out, 100% irrelevant and unhelpful. I don't have an AdWords account. Not even in English, let alone Italian. Or, for that matter, AdSense. In any language. But this is about AdWords, isn't it?

[engine]

In simple terms, that's usually for when checking the QS. Why its doing it is something more intriguing.

[smallcompany]

Using GA?

You can stop AdsBot via robots file.

User-agent: AdsBot-Google
Disallow: /

[lucy24]

You can stop AdsBot via robots file.

Sure, but that doesn't address the really tantalizing question of what the ### it's doing here in the first place :)

Nope, don't use GA either.

Do you suppose it's gathering ammunition for a targeted sales pitch? "Here is a site whose existence I am aware of, and it isn't attached to an AdThingummy account. This state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue."

[lucy24]

:: bump ::

Showed up again yesterday on the same page. I remain mystified :) Any chance it could be investigating links from some Italian page that does use AdThingie? Not that I've got any evidence such a page exists, unless it's an in-text link (meaning that visitors would show up as type-ins).

I've gone over and posted a question in google forums. But this frankly is an admission of defeat :(

[not2easy]

The AdsBot is generally checking for content on landing pages to determine relevance and quality score. I block it on GP because I am not running AdWords.

Many years ago I found an empty WP site bouncing an Ad campaign off my content and decided that it was easier to deny AdsBot. I have no clue how they were doing it, but a Google alert led me to the site and when I couldn't see anything there I used the URL to "save file as" and saw a .php header redirect. I am not saying that is what is happening, but if you are not running AdWords, I would deny it in robots.txt