AI crawler · Google · Fetches when a user asks
Google-GeminiNotebook: what it is, its user agent, and how to block it
Google-GeminiNotebook is Google's fetcher for user requests. Fetches the URLs Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) users add as sources. In our 13 October 2026 study, 92 of 2,332 live top sites with readable robots.txt rules (3.9%) disallow Google-GeminiNotebook. Part of the AI crawler list.
What Google-GeminiNotebook does
Operator: Google. Job: Fetches when a user asks. May ignore robots.txt.
“Because the fetch was requested by a user, these fetchers generally ignore robots.txt rules.”
Google-GeminiNotebook user agent
robots.txt token: Google-GeminiNotebook (matched case-insensitively).
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; K) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/138.0.0.0 Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Google-GeminiNotebook; +https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-gemininotebook)Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/137.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 (compatible; Google-GeminiNotebook; +https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-gemininotebook)Google writes W.X.Y.Z where the Chrome version goes.
robots.txt: allow or block Google-GeminiNotebook
Allow
User-agent: Google-GeminiNotebook
Allow: /Block
User-agent: Google-GeminiNotebook
Disallow: /Affects AI answers and citations. Blocking it refuses the fetch Google makes when a user asks its assistant to read your page. Google says robots.txt may not apply to these user-triggered fetches, so a Disallow may change nothing.
Once a group names Google-GeminiNotebook, it ignores your User-agent: * rules, so copy any paths you still want blocked into it.
How many top sites block Google-GeminiNotebook
Disallow Google-GeminiNotebook in robots.txt
3.9%
92 of 2,332 sites
In our 13 October 2026 study, 92 of 2,332 live top sites with readable robots.txt rules (3.9%) disallow Google-GeminiNotebook.
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-GeminiNotebook 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-GeminiNotebook
- Finds the group Google-GeminiNotebook 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-GeminiNotebook?+
Google-GeminiNotebook is Google's fetcher for user requests. Fetches the URLs Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) users add as sources.
What is Google-GeminiNotebook's user agent?+
Google documents it as: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; K) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/138.0.0.0 Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Google-GeminiNotebook; +https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-gemininotebook). Match on the token Google-GeminiNotebook, since version numbers change.
How do I block Google-GeminiNotebook?+
Add "User-agent: Google-GeminiNotebook" followed by "Disallow: /" to your robots.txt. May ignore robots.txt, per Google.
Does blocking Google-GeminiNotebook affect AI search citations?+
Blocking it refuses the fetch Google makes when a user asks its assistant to read your page. Google says robots.txt may not apply to these user-triggered fetches, so a Disallow may change nothing.
How many websites block Google-GeminiNotebook?+
In our 13 October 2026 study, 92 of 2,332 live top sites with readable robots.txt rules (3.9%) disallow Google-GeminiNotebook.