Google-Extended user agent
Operated by Google
Google-Extended is a robots.txt control token that lets sites opt out of their content being used to train and ground Gemini models.
The Google-Extended bot at a glance
- Google-Extended is operated by Google and collects public web pages that may be used to train AI models.
- The robots.txt token for Google-Extended is Google-Extended.
- Blocking an AI training crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- Google-Extended robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is Google-Extended?
Google-Extended is not a separate crawler: Google crawls with its existing user agents and reads the Google-Extended rule to decide whether content may be used for Gemini apps and Vertex AI training and grounding.
Google states that Google-Extended does not affect inclusion or ranking in Google Search, including AI Overviews.
- Google-Extended never appears in server logs, because it has no user agent string.
Should you block Google-Extended?
Blocking Google-Extended is a business decision: it protects your content but can lower how well AI products know your brand.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking an AI training crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking keeps your future pages out of that company's training data, so its models may know less about your brand over time. It does not remove you from that company's AI search, which uses a separate bot. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Your choice |
How to block or allow Google-Extended
Put the robots.txt rule in the file at the root of every domain and subdomain, for example https://example.com/robots.txt. The token Google-Extended is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Google-Extended
User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Google-Extended
User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Google-Extended out of private areas only
User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Google-Extended
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Google\-Extended)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Google-Extended
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Google\-Extended) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Google-Extended")How to verify real Google-Extended traffic
Google publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Google-Extended, so the user agent cannot be verified. Anyone can send the same string. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
How to find Google-Extended in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Google-Extended requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Google-Extended" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.
Google-Extended FAQ
Google-Extended uses the robots.txt token "Google-Extended". Google does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. Google states that Google-Extended follows robots.txt rules written for the "Google-Extended" token.
Blocking an AI training crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. Blocking keeps your future pages out of that company's training data, so its models may know less about your brand over time. It does not remove you from that company's AI search, which uses a separate bot.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: Google-Extended" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Google publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Google-Extended, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "Google-Extended", for example with: grep -i "Google-Extended" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Google crawler documentation. Last reviewed by Justin Hà.
See which of these bots actually reach your website
The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers in your server log, for free. The GEO Technical Package sets up robots.txt, llms.txt and crawler access for AI search.
