John Mueller, a Google Search developer advocate, said on X that Google Search does not use Sistrix’s a virus scanner. Googlebot does not scan documents for viruses as it crawls the web.

John wrote, “Google doesn’t use that virus scanner.” John is referring to Sistrix.

This is in response to an issue Patrick Heijmans, an SEO, had who wrote, “I conducted a thorough scan of my website with Sistrix, revealing that all URLs in the sitemap are returning a 408 error. This issue stems from the server’s virus scanner. @JohnMu, could you shed light on how Google deals with this and interacts with a virus scanner?”

John said, no “Google doesn’t use that virus scanner.” “It sounds like your server is just protecting itself against random bots, which could be a good thing too. Ultimately, this is between you & the tools that you’re using,” John added.

Here are those posts:

Google doesn’t use that virus scanner. It sounds like your server is just protecting itself against random bots, which could be a good thing too. Ultimately, this is between you & the tools that you’re using.

— I am John – ⭐ ⭐ LIVE ⭐ ⭐ (@JohnMu) November 9, 2023

Forum discussion at X.