Google-InspectionTool is a new crawler, a new Googlebot issued by Google. This new Google crawler will be used by Google Search’s testing tools, such as the rich results test and Google Search Console’s URL inspection tool to identify crawling activity. Google has released information about this new crawler in its help manual, which can be found here. “Google-InspectionTool is the crawler used by Search testing tools such as the Rich Result Test and URL inspection in Search Console according to the documentation. It mimics Googlebot except for the user agent and user agent token.”
The crawl activity’s user agent token can be either the classic Googlebot or the new Google-InspectionTool. Google also provided the entire user agent strings for mobile and desktop crawlers.
Crawler enthusiasts may notice Google-InspectionTool if they examine the bot and crawling activities in their log files. This is especially true if you employ Google Search Console’s Rich Result Test and URL inspection features. If you see problems with these tools performing their functions you may be preventing the Google-InspectionTool user agent from accessing your site. If you have strong regulations in place make sure to allow Google-InspectionTool to crawl your site.