What is Googlebot-News? Google's search crawler
Googlebot-News is the robots.txt token Google says governs crawling for Google News, including news.google.com and the Google News app.
25 of the 1662 major websites we measure block Googlebot-News in robots.txt (2%). 68 of those sites name it directly in their robots.txt; the rest are covered by a wildcard rule.
Key facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Operator | |
| Used for | Google News |
| Type | Search engine. Builds a search engine's index. Listed here because people look it up beside AI crawlers. It isn't counted in the AI crawler figures. |
| robots.txt token | Googlebot-News |
| Operator's documentation | Read it here |
What blocking Googlebot-News does
Google says its common crawlers always obey robots.txt, and that a crawler uses the most specific group that names it, or the * group when none does.
How to allow or block Googlebot-News
Add one of these groups to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain. It is a stated preference that well-behaved crawlers read, not an enforcement mechanism.
User-agent: Googlebot-News Disallow: /
User-agent: Googlebot-News Allow: /
Googlebot-News user agent string
Google's page doesn't list a full string, so look for Googlebot-News in the user agent field of your logs.
How to verify a request is really Googlebot-News
Anyone can put a crawler's name in a user agent string, so the name alone proves nothing. Google says Googlebot-News has no user agent of its own: it visits with Googlebot's user agents, so it can only be told apart in robots.txt.
How to whitelist Googlebot-News in a firewall or CDN
robots.txt only states a preference. A firewall, CDN or bot protection service can still refuse the request, and the crawler then gets an error even though robots.txt allows it.
- Check that no group in your robots.txt blocks it, using the rule above.
- Add an allow rule in your firewall or CDN that matches the name in the user agent. Keep the rule narrow, because anyone can copy a name.
- Check your server logs for a 200 response from Googlebot-News afterwards.
On Cloudflare, also check AI Crawler and Agent access policies, which can block search, agent and training traffic across a site.
Why Googlebot-News gets a 403 or 405 error
A 403 means the server refused the request, which usually points to a firewall or bot rule. A 405 means the server refused the request's method, so check any rule that only permits certain methods. A crawler that obeys robots.txt won't request a page it is told to avoid, so an error in your logs points to your server's configuration. To stop it deliberately at the server, this nginx rule returns a 403:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Googlebot-News") {
return 403;
}Who blocks Googlebot-News, by sector
| Sector | Sites measured | Blocking | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social and media platforms | 115 | 6 | 5% |
| Finance and business media | 94 | 3 | 3% |
| Reference and research | 114 | 3 | 3% |
| AI companies | 128 | 3 | 2% |
| News publishers | 182 | 3 | 2% |
| Technology media | 126 | 3 | 2% |
| E-commerce and retail | 92 | 1 | 1% |
| Government and institutions | 98 | 1 | 1% |
| Hosting and infrastructure | 98 | 1 | 1% |
| SaaS platforms | 196 | 1 | 1% |
| Developer references | 159 | 0 | 0% |
| Health publishers | 88 | 0 | 0% |
| SEO and marketing tools | 86 | 0 | 0% |
| Travel | 86 | 0 | 0% |
Sites blocking Googlebot-News
abcnews.go.com, afterpay.com, barrons.com, consilium.europa.eu, devclass.com, distill.pub, hackernoon.com, imdb.com, instacart.com, linguee.com, lobste.rs, magento.com, marketwatch.com, netflix.com, pinterest.com, poe.com, reddit.com, sambanova.ai, sciencedirect.com, sentinelone.com, theregister.com, todayonline.com, wordreference.com, wsj.com, x.com.
Sites that allow Googlebot-News by name
academia.edu, apollo.io, azcentral.com, bangkokpost.com, belfasttelegraph.co.uk, bild.de, bloomberg.com, cmswire.com, cnn.com, dailymail.co.uk, disneyplus.com, eltiempo.com, eluniversal.com.mx, express.co.uk, facebook.com, flickr.com, forbes.com, fortinet.com, globeandmail.com, golem.de, guru3d.com, hertz.com, heygen.com, hindustantimes.com, independent.ie, instagram.com, irishexaminer.com, irishtimes.com, jd.com, latimes.com, lemonde.fr, liberation.fr, meta.ai, mirror.co.uk, moneysavingexpert.com, news.com.au, nzherald.co.nz, nzz.ch, phonearena.com, politico.com, and 25 more in the full dataset.
Other Google crawlers
Google-Extended (Gemini training control), GoogleOther (research and development fetch), Google-CloudVertexBot (Vertex AI on-demand fetch), Google-Agent (agents acting for users), Google-GeminiNotebook (user-added sources), Googlebot (search indexing), Googlebot-Image (image indexing), Googlebot-Video (video indexing), Storebot-Google (shopping crawl), Google-InspectionTool (search testing tools), GoogleOther-Image (image fetch for research), GoogleOther-Video (video fetch for research), AdsBot-Google-Mobile (mobile ad quality), AdsBot-Google (ad quality), Mediapartners-Google (ad matching), APIs-Google (API push notifications), Google-CWS (Chrome Web Store checks), FeedFetcher-Google (feed retrieval), GoogleMessages (link preview), Google-Pinpoint (user-added documents), GoogleProducer (publisher feeds), Google-Read-Aloud (read aloud on request), Google-Site-Verification (site verification).
See all 36 AI crawlers, the rule change log or the full study. Being reachable is only the first step: how AI search engines choose what to cite covers the rest.
Cite this data
You are welcome to quote or republish these figures. Please credit IndexHalo with a link to this page (CC BY 4.0). All our datasets are on the data page.
IndexHalo. "Googlebot-News block rate across major websites." Measured 12 November 2026. https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/googlebot-news/
<a href="https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/googlebot-news/">Googlebot-News block rate across major websites, IndexHalo</a>