Gary Illyes from Google noted that the list of Googlebot IP addresses that Google started to publish in 2021 and has updated last month is actually maintained in real-time by pulling directly from the “production systems’ configuration files,” he said.

Gary posted this tidbit of information on LinkedIn hinting that the Googlebot IP netblocks list is not the only thing that is pulled from production files into the Google help documents.

Gary wrote, “Did you know that some information on developers.google.com/search/docs is automatically pulled from our production systems’ configuration files? For example, the Googlebot IP netblocks is one of those things ( developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/googlebot.json).” He added that they might do a podcast about this information.

I mean, it makes sense to update some technical details like lists from a live system to the help documents. But at the same time, you don’t want a bug to impact the help docs – but I guess if it does, maybe more people would notice and Google can fix it sooner?

Forum discussion at LinkedIn.