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What is Google-Agent, and how do I block it?

Google-Agent is Google's user-triggered fetcher. Google documents no robots.txt token for it, so we have no verified lines to block it. Checked October 29, 2026.

What is Google-Agent?

Google-Agent is Google's user-triggered fetcher. A user-triggered fetcher runs when a person asks an AI product to open a page, not on a schedule. From the operator's wording: agents hosted on Google infrastructure act on user request.

OperatorGoogle
Purpose (operator wording)user-triggered fetch (agents hosted on Google infrastructure act on user request)
robots.txt tokenGoogle-Agent
User agent stringDesktop: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Google-Agent; +https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-agent) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36
Respects robots.txtNo (Google: user-triggered fetchers generally ignore robots.txt)
IP rangeshttps://developers.google.com/static/crawling/ipranges/user-triggered-agents.json
Last verified

What else should I know about Google-Agent?

What is the Google-Agent user agent string?

This is the user agent string Google documents for Google-Agent, as of October 29, 2026. Version numbers and details can change, so match on the token in robots.txt, not on the whole string.

Google-Agent user agent string
Desktop: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Google-Agent; +https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-agent) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36

How do I block Google-Agent in robots.txt?

Google documents no robots.txt token for Google-Agent, so we have no verified lines to show. Block lines are not stated.

How do I opt out of Google training but stay in its search?

Each Google user agent has its own token, so you can set them one by one. This file blocks Google-Extended and allows Googlebot. Every line comes from the rows in this dataset. Whether allowing a bot keeps you in a product is Google's call, so check each crawler's page.

Google: block training, allow search and user fetch
User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /

User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /

Does blocking Google-Agent affect AI answers?

Google does not say what blocking Google-Agent changes. That is not stated.

Each other Google user agent has its own robots.txt token, so a rule for Google-Agent does not cover them. See the related crawlers below.

Does Google-Agent follow robots.txt?

No. Google: user-triggered fetchers generally ignore robots.txt. Google user-triggered fetchers page: they 'generally ignore robots.txt rules' because the fetch was requested by a user.

Robots.txt is a request, not a lock (RFC 9309).

What IP addresses does Google-Agent use?

Google publishes a list at https://developers.google.com/static/crawling/ipranges/user-triggered-agents.json. We did not download or parse it. A request that claims to be Google-Agent but comes from outside that list is not Google-Agent.

Which other Google crawlers are there?

What should I read next?

Next: give AI tools something to quote

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