Blocking Google Via Whitelisting IPs Is Fine

John Mueller of Google said it is okay to whitelist specific IP addresses if you do not want GoogleBot to access that content yet. That is not a form of cloaking and not against Google’s guidelines.

John Mueller said on Twitter “If you’re only allowing a small set of IP addresses (you & your testers), then Googlebot wouldn’t be in that set, so you wouldn’t need to explicitly also block Googlebot (it would be blocked by default, like everyone else).”

Here is the tweet:

If you’re only allowing a small set of IP addresses (you & your testers), then Googlebot wouldn’t be in that set, so you wouldn’t need to explicitly also block Googlebot (it would be blocked by default, like everyone else).

— ???? John ???? (@JohnMu) October 18, 2019

Makes sense…

Forum discussion at Twitter.