Google manual review

which user agent do they use?

[SEOPTI]

I'm blocking empty user agents with this line of code:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^-?$
RewriteRule .* - [F]

Just imagine a Google site reviewer masks his user agent and gets a nice Forbidden, do you think it might not be wise to use this code just in case a manual review happens?

[incrediBILL]

I'd assume Google manual reviewers use a regular browser just like we do.

[leadegroot]

When I have seen what seem to be reviews in the logs, judging by the referers, the visitors have used normal browsers, firefox being the only one I remember.

Remember they aren't setting out to trap you, they are reviewing your site to see what regular visitors see.

[wilderness]

Saw some these blank UA's from google today.

I see other manual reviews from Google which eat 403's because of a UA OS term, however the denial of access hasn't affected the normal crawling.
Nor has the denial of all the other Google tools affected the normal crawlings (at least on my sites.)

Don

[keyplyr]

I'm blocking empty user agents with this line of code:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^-?$
RewriteRule .* - [F]

SEOPTI, I also block blank referrers but allow IP addresses from Google Wireless Transcoder, Google mobile, GoogleT5 and a sub-block of Yahoo to not use a referrer. Because of site specifics, I also allow some translators, school libraries, link checkers and validators the same privilege.