Google Search Console

[lucy24]

Nope, not in the wrong forum.

66.102.6.77 - - [18/Apr/2017:17:27:26 -0700] "GET /directory/ HTTP/1.1" 200 12023 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; Google Search Console) Chrome/27.0.1453 Safari/537.36" 

When you do a “Fetch as Googlebot” in GSC and ask for Render, there are two separate crawls: one with the Googlebot from the standard crawl range, and a second one from a non-crawl range that yields “What a human sees”.

This has actually existed for at least a year, but they must have changed their headers, because earlier requests were blocked at the gate so I only just noticed it.

Chrome 27? Really, Google?

[keyplyr]

Chrome 27? Really, Google?

It's Linux. They have a different series of build versions. Their numbers will always be behind that of iOS, Windows or Android.

[lucy24]

Funny you should say that, because when I went to search recent logs, the first thing that popped up (that is, the last thing on the alphabetical list) was

66.249.64.144 - - [30/Sep/2016:12:49:30 -0700] "GET /dir/subdir/page.html HTTP/1.1" 200 143610 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2272.96 Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"

with a UA I could swear I never knew about. But still, 41 > 27.

Excluding Android--which reduces the total by about 97%--

66.249.88.21 - - [27/Sep/2016:14:44:06 -0700] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 2793 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.75 Safari/537.36 Google Favicon"

Clearly I am due for another At Home With The Robots, because that Faviconbot UA is also new to me. (Remember when they had no UA at all? And then it was Firefox/6 for ages.) And this

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; Google Web Preview) Chrome/27.0.1453 Safari/537.36

I'm not actively constraining the search to Google, it just keeps coming up. But that one makes sense: "Google Search Console" and "Google Web Preview" are essentially doing the same thing, so they may as well have the same UA.

Here's a recent human:

162.156.aa.bb - - [24/Mar/2017:00:11:40 -0700] "GET /blahblah HTTP/1.1" 200 2413 "http://example.com/pagename.html" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/57.0.2987.110 Safari/537.36"

And that's what I thought. Linux version numbers may be a little different from other platforms, but they can't be off-the-map lower, or they'd run afoul of many websites' old-browser rejection.

[keyplyr]

Linux version numbers may be a little different from other platforms, but they can't be off-the-map lower, or they'd run afoul of many websites' old-browser rejection.

They are though.

The Chrome browser for Linux 32 bit versions numbers are a lot lower. It's been discontinued but they are still in use.

The Chrome browser for Linux 64 bit numbers are higher but stll about half of the Windows or iOS numbers. Never used it on Android so don't know.

[added]
This is also true for the other Linux versions of browsers: Firefox, Internet Explorer & Safari. Edge is relatively new so not the same dynamic (yet.)

[dstiles]

I use linux and the firefox browser is ALWAYS the latest. It depends on what flavour of linux (debian, mint, redhat etc) and whether it's maintained or not. I update my Mint machines within a few hours of notification; some people do not - or cannot. And if the linux version is really out of date, tough!

Mind you, my own version of firefox is usually one pont out of date because I seldom re-start it.

[keyplyr]

It's not whether the Linux version is "out of date" it's just that the version series is different than Windows or iOS.

[dstiles]

What version i windows currently at? My linux Mint firefox is version 53.

I crrently block all firefox below 40 with a warning of "Obsolete Browser" - with a few exceptions that are usually identifiable as bot-like.

[keyplyr]

Windows Firefox is 53 as well. Firefox for Linux Debian seems to be 51 & iOS at 51.

Linux Ubuntu/Debian seems to differ depending whether it is 32 or 64 bit as does Fedora/openSUSE. Difficult to get a build version when accessing the pages from Windows.

I stopped using Firefox as it is now the slowest snail on the planet. For my needs, Chrome 57 is the absolute fastest, plus it has the Adsense Publisher Toolbar. It also integrates with Google Home Assistant & the Chrome WiFi Ultra Dongle. Chrome also has a better Web Developer Toolbar IMO.

Chrome 27 does seem archaic though. So doing a bit of research, it now appears browsers have purposely adjusted their version number to coincide with each other. Just a couple years ago my default Firefox for Ubuntu was something like 12.*.

[lucy24]

Chrome 27 does seem archaic though.

There's a whole separate food-for-thought issue involving UA strings sent by robots of any kind, for any purpose. Obviously it's not really rendering the content, so what's the “Chrome” business for? Do a lot of sites send out different content depending on the antiquity of the requesting browser, and if so, why would a major search engine want to see that particular version of the content?

[keyplyr]

You may be putting too much conjecture towards this :)

It's just as likely some tech at Google cut'n pasted a random Chrome UA string as a testing agent then forgot about it after returning from the salad bar upstairs at the Googleplex.