Bot from Google

Google-CloudVertexBot

In short

Google-CloudVertexBot is Google's bot, filed under Other. The token to write in robots.txt is Google-CloudVertexBot. Verify it by reverse DNS, then a forward lookup. Also matches the Googlebot token group per Google's table. On robots.txt, preferences addressed to Google-CloudVertexBot affect crawls requested by site owners for building Vertex AI Agents; no effect on Search.

Operator

Google Vendor profile: Google

Purpose

Other All other rows. Link previews, ad checks, dataset crawls, SEO tools and legacy tokens that fit none of the five purposes.

User-agent string

No exact string is published. What the operator or a third party says: User-Agent substring "Google-CloudVertexBot"

robots.txt token

Google-CloudVertexBot Matched case-insensitively (RFC 9309). The token and the user-agent string are different things.

Respects robots.txt

Yes, per operator

Google: preferences addressed to Google-CloudVertexBot affect crawls requested by site owners for building Vertex AI Agents; no effect on Search. Source, read 2026-11-04.

Verification

Reverse DNS

Reverse-resolve the source address, then forward-resolve the name and require the same address. Documentation, read 2026-11-04.

IP ranges

developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/googlebot.json

Rate behaviour

Crawls are requested by the site owner.

Block rate

10.9% of 5,938 top-10,000 sites with a parsed robots.txt disallow Google-CloudVertexBot at the root (645 sites). 7.1% name it; 3.8% refuse it only through a * group. Rank 16 of 31 tokens measured.

Across all 8,624 parsed robots.txt files in the crawl: 8.3% (5.5% named). Crawl of 2026-11-04; report.

Documentation

developers.google.com, read 2026-11-04.

Note. Also matches the Googlebot token group per Google's table.

Allow and refuse lines

User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot
Disallow: /

Refusing or allowing in robots.txt states a preference. Enforcement of a refusal belongs in your WAF; see how to verify the identity above.

Google in the Verification Ledger

Five IP lists, reverse DNS for every class, and an experimental key directory for Google-Agent. Nothing for auto browse in the user's Chrome. All operators.

IP lists

• developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/googlebot.json
• developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/special-crawlers.json
• developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/user-triggered-fetchers.json
• developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/user-triggered-fetchers-google.json
• developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/user-triggered-agents.json

Reverse DNS

crawl-*.googlebot.com, geo-crawl-*.geo.googlebot.com, rate-limited-proxy-*.google.com, *.gae.googleusercontent.com, google-proxy-*.google.com

Key directory

https://agent.bot.goog/.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory (Google-Agent, subset of requests, experimental)

Cloudflare

not checked

Visa TAP registry

no public operator-level registration found (checked 2026-11-04)

Mastercard Agent Pay

no public operator-level registration found (checked 2026-11-04)

Other Google rows

• Googlebot Search index token Googlebot
• Google-Extended (control token) Training token Google-Extended
• GoogleOther Other token GoogleOther
• Storebot-Google Search index token Storebot-Google
• Google-Agent Task agent no token
• Gemini in Chrome (auto browse) Task agent no token
• Google-GeminiNotebook (was Google-NotebookLM) Live answer fetch no token

Last reviewed 2026-11-04