: Referrer from merlot-ops-labeling-devel.corp.google.com A mysterious entity from Google is checking out our site from time to time, curious why. We have referrers from merlot-ops-labeling-devel.corp.google.com

@Berumen354

To begin with any URL that shows up under corp.google.com is an internal URL used by Google staff. Having taken a look at Google Merlot the only information I can find is that it is a project management framework that Google has released under the GNU GPL v2 license although this would seem to preclude its use in accessing public websites. The only thing that could make sense as there seems to be a few people out there who have seen that host name in their server logs is that it is possible that internally Google has a project running under the merlot-ops-labeling-devel host which is used for some internal task to do with public websites, such as an audit of the website, compliance check, manual check, etc.

As it can be positively confirmed that the domain is in fact used and operated by Google I feel confident in saying there is no need to be overly concerned about it and that it does not appear to be a malicious breach access on your site. Furthermore as was mentioned by dhaupin in comments they would not be able to access any further information from your site than what a member of the public could access on your site.

Shouldn't be too much of an issue, if you still feel concerned and feel that this shouldn't be happening you can add a .htaccess rule to block that referrer from accessing your site but at this point I don't think that this would be strictly speaking necessary.

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