Google Web Accelerator

... it's back!

[Umbra]

I recently installed Google Web Accelerator and spotted a hit to a test page from 66.249.84.**

It seems as if the old GWA IP ranges (64\.233\.17[23]\.¦72\.14\.19[24]\.) are no longer in use since approx March.

[wilderness]

I've a notation from this Class C during July 2007, while a portion of the UA comtained "Google-TR-5.1.705.4505-en".

On Feb 18 of this year, the Class C fetched some pages and I implemented multiple conditions based on both IP and UA. (I'm sure that it will require adjustment).

Thanks for the heads up.

[Samizdata]

This is how Google tells webmasters to deal with this nuisance:

You can also configure your server to refuse prefetch requests by returning a 403 HTTP response code for requests which include an "x-moz: prefetch" header.

[webaccelerator.google.com...]

I am not suggesting that doing this actually works.

...

[Umbra]

Interestingly, this page suggests sending a 404 response code:

[scholar.google.com...]

Admittedly, that was written in regards to browser prefetching of Google search results, but I don't see much distinction between that and Google Web Accelerator. Has anyone ran any thorough testing of GWA's reaction to 403 vs 404 response codes?

[edited by: Umbra at 7:51 pm (utc) on July 4, 2008]

[Umbra]

I don't know if this list is accurate and/or complete, but...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Google_Web_Accelerator_proxies

[Samizdata]

I knew Wikipedia banned Google Web Accelerator but maintaining a list of IPs seems laborious.

Certainly Google's instructions for dealing with it are useless, so I ended up with:

SetEnvIfNoCase X-Forwarded-For .+ proxy=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase X-moz prefetch gwa=yes
RewriteCond %{ENV:gwa} yes

On most of my sites the ensuing rule feeds it a 403 and seems to work fine.

Actually trapping it brings further complications, but they are not insurmountable.

It's really only worth trapping it as an academic exercise though (unless you want to make a point) and if memory serves the technique above will stop other similar stupidities like the IE7Pro plugin.

...