How do I know if my website is blocking visitors or crawlers from certain countries?

Last updated: August 12, 2026

This check tells you whether your landing page is blocking real visitors or Google's ad crawler by country or network - and why that matters for both your Google Ads approval status and what N.Rich can track. The answer determines whether your IT/security team needs to update a firewall, CDN, or robots.txt rule before ads or tracking recover.

The short version: Google requires your landing page to be reachable globally, by anyone and by Google's crawler - not just from the countries your campaign targets. Any region-, IP-, or bot-level block anywhere on the page will trigger a disapproval and can silently cut off N.Rich tracking for visitors in that region too. There is no "just block the countries we're not targeting" exception - if it's blocked anywhere, fix it everywhere.

Why this matters

Two things break at once when a landing page blocks a region:

  • Google Ads disapproves the ad. Google's AdsBot-Google crawler visits your destination URL from servers around the world, not just from inside your target campaign countries. If the crawler gets refused - most commonly an HTTP 403 Forbidden - the ad is disapproved under Google's Destination Not Accessible policy (sometimes shown as Destination Not Working or Not Crawlable), regardless of which countries you're actually running ads in.

  • N.Rich stops seeing those visitors. If the block happens at the server level, the page never loads for anyone in the blocked region or network - which means the N.Rich tag never fires either, for Cookieless or Standard mode. Those accounts simply won't show up in Website Analytics or Buyer Journey, and it can look like a tag or tracking problem when the real cause sits upstream of the tag entirely.

What causes this

A landing page usually ends up blocking visitors or crawlers because of a security configuration, not on purpose:

  • Geographic restrictions - the server or CDN is set to block IP ranges from specific countries.

  • User-agent / bot blocking - a firewall or security service (Cloudflare, Akamai, and similar WAFs are common) is configured to block known crawler signatures, including AdsBot-Google.

  • IP allowlisting gaps - the firewall is flagging the crawler's or a visitor's IP range as suspicious traffic and blocking it outright.

Step 1: Confirm real visitors are affected

Load the page from a location or network you suspect is blocked:

  • Use a VPN set to the region in question, then reload the page with the VPN off and on.

  • Test from mobile data as well as a fixed connection - carrier IP ranges are sometimes blocked separately from residential ones.

Page loads normally either way → the block isn't region-wide for regular visitors; go to Step 2 in case it's crawler-specific instead.

Page returns "Access Denied," a 403, or a blank/error page from one location but not another → you've confirmed a regional block on real traffic. Skip to "What to do with the result" below.

Step 2: Confirm whether Google's crawler specifically is blocked

Even when regular visitors can reach the page fine, Google's crawler can still be refused on its own - this is the most common root cause of a Destination Not Accessible disapproval.

  1. Open the landing page in Chrome.

  2. Right-click anywhere on the page and select Inspect (or press F12) to open DevTools.

  3. Click the three dots (⋮) in the top right of the DevTools panel → More tools → Network conditions.

  4. Under "User agent," uncheck Use browser default, select Custom..., and paste: AdsBot-Google (+http://www.google.com/adsbot.html)

  5. Refresh the page (Ctrl+R / Cmd+R).

Page loads as normal → Google's crawler isn't being blocked; the disapproval likely has a different cause - see the Google Ads policy guide; disapproval reasons article.

Page now shows "403 Forbidden" or "Access Denied" while your normal browser session still works fine → the server is explicitly blocking Google's crawler identity, confirmed.

What to do with the result

Once a block is confirmed, this sits with whoever manages the website's hosting, firewall, or CDN - usually the client's IT or web team, not something fixable from inside N.Rich:

  • Check server logs for the specific URL to see what triggered the 403 for the AdsBot-Google user-agent.

  • Update robots.txt to explicitly allow User-agent: AdsBot-Google.

  • Allowlist Google's crawler IP ranges in the WAF/CDN (Cloudflare, Akamai, etc.) - see Google's crawler documentation for current ranges.

  • Per Google's policy, the destination must be accessible globally to its crawlers, regardless of which countries the campaign actually targets - a firewall rule scoped to "just block non-target countries" will still trigger a disapproval.

Once the webmaster confirms the crawler is no longer blocked, resubmit the ad for review: go to Ads (or Assets) in the Campaigns menu, hover over the ad, select Edit, make the change, and Save to trigger re-review.

If the block also covered real visitors (Step 1), flag this separately as a tracking gap, not just an ads issue - any accounts visiting from the blocked region or network during that window won't appear in N.Rich's Website Analytics or Buyer Journey, since the tag never had a chance to load.

What's next

Need help at any point? Reach out via the chat in the bottom-left corner of the N.Rich platform - our support team is happy to walk you through it.