Google-CloudVertexBot user agent
Operated by Google
Google-CloudVertexBot is Google's crawler for site owners who build Vertex AI Agents on their own websites.
The Google-CloudVertexBot bot at a glance
- Google-CloudVertexBot is operated by Google and fetches pages to power a specific product feature.
- The robots.txt token for Google-CloudVertexBot is Google-CloudVertexBot.
- Blocking an AI training crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- Google-CloudVertexBot robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is Google-CloudVertexBot?
Google-CloudVertexBot crawls a site only when its owner asks Vertex AI to index that site for an AI agent.
Google states it has no effect on Google Search or other products.
Should you block Google-CloudVertexBot?
Blocking Google-CloudVertexBot 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-CloudVertexBot
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-CloudVertexBot is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Google-CloudVertexBot
User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Google-CloudVertexBot
User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Google-CloudVertexBot out of private areas only
User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Google-CloudVertexBot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Google\-CloudVertexBot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Google-CloudVertexBot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Google\-CloudVertexBot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Google-CloudVertexBot")How to verify real Google-CloudVertexBot traffic
Google publishes the IP ranges that Google-CloudVertexBot uses. A request with the Google-CloudVertexBot user agent from an IP outside that list is an impersonator.
Official Google-CloudVertexBot IP list (JSON)
Reverse DNS check: look up the request IP, confirm the hostname ends in googlebot.com, then look up that hostname and confirm it returns the same IP.
# 1. Reverse lookup: the hostname must end in googlebot.com
host REQUEST_IP
# 2. Forward lookup: must return the same REQUEST_IP
host HOSTNAME_FROM_STEP_1How to find Google-CloudVertexBot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Google-CloudVertexBot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Google-CloudVertexBot" 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-CloudVertexBot FAQ
Google-CloudVertexBot uses the robots.txt token "Google-CloudVertexBot". Google does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. Google states that Google-CloudVertexBot follows robots.txt rules written for the "Google-CloudVertexBot" 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-CloudVertexBot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Yes. Google publishes the IP ranges Google-CloudVertexBot uses. Check the request IP against that list; a matching user agent from any other IP is an impersonator.
Search your server access log for "Google-CloudVertexBot", for example with: grep -i "Google-CloudVertexBot" 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.
