Googlebot's Javascript random() function is deterministic. random() as executed by Googlebot returns the same predicable sequence. More interestingly, Googlebot runs a much faster timer for setTimeout and setInterval—as Tom Anthony points out, “Why actually wait 5 seconds when you are a bot?”
Recent articles
- Highlights from my appearance on the Data Renegades podcast with CL Kao and Dori Wilson - 26th November 2025
- Claude Opus 4.5, and why evaluating new LLMs is increasingly difficult - 24th November 2025
- sqlite-utils 4.0a1 has several (minor) backwards incompatible changes - 24th November 2025