Looking back as far as 2015, to 2019, I see 77 instances where google requested various PDF files from my website, where the user-agent was:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Google AppsViewer; http: // drive.google.com)
There is no referrer. About half of these requests were in 2015. I see no such requests in 2020. I see 2 requests in 2021 (from IP 66.102.x.x).
At first I thought these were all google-bot, because most of them were 66.249.what.ever, but upon closer look, they are all google-proxy (most are 66.249.various, a few are 66.102.various and 64.233.various). I had been assuming that all hits from 66.249.anything were always googlebot (and deleted them from my log-examinations) but now I see that has not been the case.
The hit today was from a completely different IP range - 74.125.214.112 and that's what tweaked my interest. I ran a back-check on the user-agent and that's how I discovered their history as noted above.
So - any ideas who / what is behind these hits?
Are they part of google's website indexing/search functions (and hence should not be blocked) ?
Should I infer that someone (or multiple some-ones) have these PDF files in their google drive account? And if so, that this hit activity from the google-proxy IP's reflect some sort of user-interaction with the account and the file?
