How do I check if my website blocks visitors or Google's crawler?
This check tells you whether your landing page blocks real visitors or Google's ad crawler by country or network. The answer decides whether your IT or security team needs to update a firewall, CDN or robots.txt rule before your ads and tracking recover.
In short: Google requires your landing page to be reachable globally, by anyone and by Google's crawler, not just from the countries your campaign targets. A block by region, IP or bot anywhere triggers a disapproval, and can also stop N.Rich from tracking visitors from that region. Blocking only the countries you don't target isn't an exception: if the page is blocked anywhere, fix it everywhere.
Why this matters
Two things break at once when a landing page blocks a region:
Google disapproves the ad. Google's AdsBot-Google crawler visits your destination URL from servers around the world, not just from your target countries. If the crawler is refused, most often with an HTTP 403 Forbidden, the ad is disapproved under Google's Destination Not Accessible policy (sometimes shown as Destination Not Working or Not Crawlable), whichever countries you target.
N.Rich stops seeing those visitors. If the block happens at server level, the page never loads for anyone in the blocked region or network, so the N.Rich tag never fires either, in Cookieless or Standard mode. Those accounts won't show up in Website Analytics or Buyer Journey. It can look like a tag problem when the real cause is the block.
What causes this
A landing page usually blocks visitors or crawlers because of a security setting, not on purpose:
Geographic restrictions: the server or CDN blocks IP ranges from specific countries.
User-agent or bot blocking: a firewall or security service (Cloudflare, Akamai and similar) blocks known crawlers, including AdsBot-Google.
IP allowlisting gaps: the firewall flags the crawler's or a visitor's IP range as suspicious and blocks it.
Step 1: Check whether real visitors are affected
Load the page from a location or network you suspect is blocked:
Use a VPN set to that region, then reload the page with the VPN off and on.
Test on mobile data as well as a fixed connection: mobile carrier IP ranges are sometimes blocked separately.
The page loads normally either way: regular visitors aren't blocked by region. Go to Step 2 in case only the crawler is blocked.
The page shows "Access Denied", a 403, or a blank or error page from one location but not another: you've confirmed a regional block on real traffic. Go to "What to do with the result".
Step 2: Check whether Google's crawler is blocked
Even when visitors can reach the page, Google's crawler can still be refused. This is the most common cause of a Destination Not Accessible disapproval.
Open the landing page in Chrome.
Right-click the page and select Inspect (or press F12) to open DevTools.
Click the three dots (⋮) at the top right of DevTools, then More tools → Network conditions.
Under "User agent", untick Use browser default, select Custom... and paste: AdsBot-Google (+http://www.google.com/adsbot.html)
Refresh the page (Ctrl+R or Cmd+R).
The page loads as normal: Google's crawler isn't blocked, so the disapproval probably has another cause. See the Google Ads policy guide; disapproval reasons article.
The page now shows "403 Forbidden" or "Access Denied" while your normal browser still works: the server is blocking Google's crawler.
What to do with the result
Once a block is confirmed, it's for whoever manages the website's hosting, firewall or CDN to fix, usually your IT or web team. It can't be fixed from inside N.Rich.
Check the server logs for that URL to see what triggered the 403 for the AdsBot-Google user agent.
Update robots.txt to allow User-agent: AdsBot-Google.
Allowlist Google's crawler IP ranges in the firewall or CDN (Cloudflare, Akamai and similar). See Google's crawler documentation for the current ranges.
Google requires the page to be reachable by its crawlers globally, whichever countries the campaign targets. A rule that only blocks countries you don't target still triggers a disapproval.
Once your web team confirms the crawler is no longer blocked, open the ad in N.Rich, make your change and save it. Saving sends the ad back to Google for review. If you think the disapproval is wrong, contact your Solutions Engineer: they'll appeal it with Google for you.
If real visitors were blocked too (Step 1), treat it as a tracking gap as well as an ads issue. Accounts that visited from the blocked region or network during that time won't appear in Website Analytics or Buyer Journey, because the tag never loaded.
What's next
Need help? Reach out to your Solutions Engineer via the chat in the bottom-left corner of the N.Rich platform, by email or Slack.