Search index crawler from Google

Googlebot

In short

Googlebot is Google's search index crawler. The token to write in robots.txt is Googlebot. Verify it by reverse DNS, then a forward lookup. 2.8 percent of 5,938 top-10,000 sites with a parsed robots.txt disallow it at the root (crawl of 2026-11-04). Reverse DNS: crawl-***-***-***-***.googlebot.com or geo-crawl-***.geo.googlebot.com, then forward-confirm. Googlebot: common crawlers always obey robots.txt rules when crawling automatically.

Operator

Google Vendor profile: Google

Purpose

Search index All search index rows. Builds a search index that sends visitors back. Refusing it removes pages from that product.

User-agent string

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; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

robots.txt token

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

Respects robots.txt

Yes, per operator

Google: common crawlers always obey robots.txt rules when crawling automatically. 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

Crawl rate can be reduced via Google's documented process; Google does not support Crawl-delay.

Block rate

2.8% of 5,938 top-10,000 sites with a parsed robots.txt disallow Googlebot at the root (166 sites). 0.5% name it; 2.3% refuse it only through a * group. Rank 31 of 31 tokens measured.

Across all 8,624 parsed robots.txt files in the crawl: 2.1% (0.4% named). Crawl of 2026-11-04; report.

Documentation

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

Note. Reverse DNS: crawl-***-***-***-***.googlebot.com or geo-crawl-***.geo.googlebot.com, then forward-confirm. Cloudflare classes Googlebot as an Accountable mixed-use crawler (2026-09-15); its "Block" setting now stops Googlebot entirely.

Allow and refuse lines

User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /

User-agent: Googlebot
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)

In the news

• 2026-09-15Cloudflare adds Disallow AI Training and the Accountable label

Other Google rows

• Google-Extended (control token) Training token Google-Extended
• Google-CloudVertexBot Other token Google-CloudVertexBot
• 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