Googlebot

Googlebot crawls pages to build the search index an AI platform answers from. Most operators use a separate user agent for each job, so you can usually allow or block one without affecting the others.

Crawlers that build search indexes used by AI platforms. Access supports discovery but does not guarantee a listing or citation.

This is a full user agent string Googlebot sends. Version numbers change over time; match the Googlebot token rather than the whole string.

To block Googlebot, add this to the robots.txt at the root of your site:

Blocking it keeps your pages out of that index, so the platform has less of your content to find and cite. Allowing it makes your pages eligible, not guaranteed, to appear in answers.

To allow it explicitly, for example after a broader rule blocks other crawlers:

Check what your robots.txt allows for Googlebot and the other AI crawlers in this directory.

Google publishes the IP addresses Googlebot uses. A request that claims to be Googlebot from any other address is not genuine.

• developers.google.com/static/crawling/ipranges/common-crawlers.json

SurfacedBy's AI traffic tracking recognizes Googlebot in the user agent and checks each request against Google's published addresses. Only requests that pass count as crawls; the rest are shown separately.

Details on this page come from Google's own documentation: developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-common-crawlers.

• Google-Extendedrobots.txt control
• Google-AgentLive citation