1000 Bots - Surf the Web as Googlebot

Have you ever wanted to surf the webs as a bot? Ever wondered what the Googlebot get’s to see online that you do not? Install 1000 Bots to find out and surf the Internet as Googlebot – the most influential Internet
user of all.

1000 Bots is a simple web extension which changes your browser’s user agent to that of the Googlebot. Googlebot is a web crawler which surfs the web extensively to build a searchable index for the Google search engine (making it one of the most influential Internet users. Only what it sees is indexed and can be found by other users later). By changing your settings to match those of Googlebot, you become one of thousands of Google web crawlers browsing the web to index its contents.

Surfing the web as Googlebot gives you access to what is referred to as the grey web, a layer of content only visible to bots. In some cases it might give you access to websites and archives that are usually hidden behind a paywall. Because while the website owner will serve the normal user a login page, they will give web crawlers access to their full archive in order for it to be represented in Google’s search results.

Firefox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1000-bots/

Chrome:
(still pending review in the Chrome Web Store)


Step 1:
💻 Install the web extension

Step 2:
📡 To start surfing as Googlebot, clicking on the icon in the browser toolbar

Step 3:
🏄🏾‍♀️ Surf your favourite websites

Step 4:
🌐 Check RYBN's Double Negative Capchas to see if you pass the bot test.
https://1000scores.com/portfolio-items/rybn-double-negative-captchas/
(Sometimes take the test twice until it works)

1000 Bots is an art piece by !Mediengruppe Bitnik commissioned by the website 1000scores.com & Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus Berlin. 
It is a response to @RYBNs wonderful work Double Negative Captchas.

The source code [2] for 1000 Bots is free software and published under the GNU GPLv3.

<3 !Mediengruppe Bitnik


[1] https://1000scores.com/
[2] https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org/data/code/1000_bots_webextension.zip


Logo from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Google_%22G%22_Logo.svg