Does Google-Agent respect robots.txt?

Yes. The operator documents that Google-Agent reads robots.txt and follows Disallow rules for its own token. Rules take effect on the next fetch of the file, which can be hours or days after you publish them.

How do I block Google-Agent?

Add the Google-Agent token to robots.txt with Disallow: /. If the crawler ignores robots.txt, match the user agent at your CDN or reverse proxy and return 403 there instead.

IPScanner

Autonomous agents

Google-Agent

Q: How do I verify a request really came from Google-Agent?

You cannot, at least not from the request itself. No IP range file and no reverse-DNS convention have been published for this agent. The user-agent string is the only signal, and any client can send it, so treat a match as a claim rather than proof. Compare the source IP against hosting and datacenter ranges instead, and rate limit anything that behaves like a crawler.

Google-Agent is a bot operated by Google that browses the web on its own to finish multi-step tasks. Google-Agent is used by agents hosted on Google infrastructure to navigate the web and perform actions upon user request. It is documented as honouring robots.txt, but no IP range list or reverse-DNS convention is published, so a request carrying this user agent cannot be proven genuine.

Google-Agent at a glance

Reference data for the Google-Agent crawler
User agent	`Google-Agent` Token only. The operator has not published a full user-agent string, so match on the substring rather than an exact header.
Operator	Google
Purpose	Autonomous agents
Respects robots.txt	Yes, documentedsource
Verification method	None published, user agent only No IP range file and no reverse-DNS convention have been published for this agent. The user-agent string is the only signal, and any client can send it, so treat a match as a claim rather than proof.
Crawl pattern	Not published
Robots.txt tokens	`Google-Agent`
Operator documentation	https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/overview-google-crawlers

Google-Agent is used by agents hosted on Google infrastructure to navigate the web and perform actions upon user request.

robots.txt

Allow or block Google-Agent

Paste one of these into the robots.txt file at the root of your domain. Rules are per token, so a block on one crawler leaves every other bot untouched.

Block Google-Agent

User-agent: Google-Agent
Disallow: /

Blocks every path for this crawler only.

Allow Google-Agent

User-agent: Google-Agent
Allow: /

Explicit allow. Useful when a wildcard rule above it would otherwise catch this crawler.

Allow, except the pages you never want quoted

User-agent: Google-Agent
Allow: /
Disallow: /account/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /search

Edit the Disallow paths to match your own account, checkout and search URLs.

What blocking actually costs you

Blocking Google-Agent stops automated sessions that fill forms, click through flows and read pages the way a logged-in user would. Rate limits and challenges usually work better here than a robots.txt line.

Block every crawler in the directory at once

Verification

Is that really Google-Agent?

A user-agent header is a string the client chooses. Scrapers copy Google-Agent precisely because site owners allow it. No IP range file and no reverse-DNS convention have been published for this agent. The user-agent string is the only signal, and any client can send it, so treat a match as a claim rather than proof.

Paste the IP address from your access log below. You will see whether it belongs to a hosting provider, a residential proxy pool or a Tor exit, plus the ASN that announces it, which is what tells you whether the claim holds up.

Datacenter IP detectionNearly every real AI crawler egresses from cloud ranges. A residential IP claiming to be one is the first thing to check.IP reputation checkSee whether the address behind a fake crawler hit has a history of abuse elsewhere.Residential proxy detectionScrapers that get blocked by user agent often come back through residential proxy pools.

Other crawlers run by Google

Gemini-Deep-ResearchAssistant fetchers Google-CloudVertexBotAutonomous agents Google-ExtendedTraining crawlers Google-FirebaseOther automated crawlers Google-Gemini-CLICoding agents Google-NotebookLMAssistant fetchers

Related crawlers

Gemini-Deep-ResearchGoogle · Assistant fetchers Google-CloudVertexBotGoogle · Autonomous agents Google-ExtendedGoogle · Training crawlers ChatGPT AgentOpenAI · Autonomous agents Claude-WebAnthropic · Autonomous agents

Agentscan

Identify crawlers automatically instead of by hand

Agentscan checks a request against published crawler ranges, reverse DNS and hosting data, then returns a verdict your edge can act on. One call per request, no range files to keep up to date.

How Agentscan works API reference Pricing What is my IP

FAQ