AI crawler · Google · Browses and acts for a user

Google-Agent: what it is, its user agent, and how to block it

Google-Agent is Google's browsing agent. Used by agents running on Google infrastructure to browse the web and take actions a user asked for. In our 13 October 2026 study, 99 of 2,332 live top sites with readable robots.txt rules (4.2%) disallow Google-Agent. Part of the AI crawler list.

What Google-Agent does

Operator: Google. Job: Browses and acts for a user. May ignore robots.txt.

“Because the fetch was requested by a user, these fetchers generally ignore robots.txt rules.”

Google's Google-Agent documentation Published IP ranges (JSON)

Google-Agent user agent

robots.txt token: Google-Agent (matched case-insensitively).

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Google-Agent; +https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-agent)

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

Google writes W.X.Y.Z where the Chrome version goes.

robots.txt: allow or block Google-Agent

Allow

User-agent: Google-Agent
Allow: /

Block

User-agent: Google-Agent
Disallow: /

Affects AI answers and citations. It browses and acts on a user's behalf. Google says it may not follow robots.txt, because a user started the task.

Once a group names Google-Agent, it ignores your User-agent: * rules, so copy any paths you still want blocked into it.

How many top sites block Google-Agent

Disallow Google-Agent in robots.txt

4.2%

99 of 2,332 sites

In our 13 October 2026 study, 99 of 2,332 live top sites with readable robots.txt rules (4.2%) disallow Google-Agent.

Sample: Tranco top 5,000, tested once on 13 October 2026 from one Indian fixed-line connection. The robots.txt share counts live sites (home page 2xx) whose rules we could read, as on the AI visibility hub. Method and CSV in the study.

Check your own site

The AI crawler checker reads your robots.txt the way Google-Agent does and tests what your firewall returns. To write the rules, use the AI robots.txt generator.

Check your page: free, about 20 seconds, no sign-in

What it checks

robots.txt for Google-Agent: Finds the group Google-Agent obeys under RFC 9309 and the rule that decides your page.
What your CDN lets through: Requests the page as OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot and compares the answers with a browser request.
Content without JavaScript: AI crawlers don't run JavaScript. The audit checks how much of the page is in the raw HTML.

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Questions

What is Google-Agent?+

Google-Agent is Google's browsing agent. Used by agents running on Google infrastructure to browse the web and take actions a user asked for.

What is Google-Agent's user agent?+

Google documents it as: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Google-Agent; +https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-agent). Match on the token Google-Agent, since version numbers change.

How do I block Google-Agent?+

Add "User-agent: Google-Agent" followed by "Disallow: /" to your robots.txt. May ignore robots.txt, per Google.

Does blocking Google-Agent affect AI search citations?+

It browses and acts on a user's behalf. Google says it may not follow robots.txt, because a user started the task.

How many websites block Google-Agent?+