What is Googlebot? Google's search crawler
Googlebot is the name of Google Search's two web crawlers, Googlebot Smartphone and Googlebot Desktop. Google says most of its requests come from the smartphone crawler, because it mainly indexes the mobile version of a site.
5 of the 1664 major websites we measure block Googlebot in robots.txt (0%). 158 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 Search |
| 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 |
| Operator's documentation | Read it here |
What blocking Googlebot does
Google says both use the same robots.txt token, so one cannot be blocked without the other, and that blocking Googlebot affects Google Search, Discover, Images, Video and News. It also says robots.txt stops crawling but does not keep a URL out of search results; noindex does that.
How to allow or block Googlebot
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 Disallow: /
User-agent: Googlebot Allow: /
Googlebot user agent string
Google's page doesn't list a full string, so look for Googlebot in the user agent field of your logs.
How to verify a request is really Googlebot
Anyone can put a crawler's name in a user agent string, so the name alone proves nothing. Google says the user agent can be spoofed, so a visit should be checked by a reverse DNS lookup on its address or against Googlebot's published IP ranges.
How to whitelist Googlebot 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 afterwards.
On Cloudflare, also check AI Crawler and Agent access policies, which can block search, agent and training traffic across a site.
Why Googlebot 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") {
return 403;
}Who blocks Googlebot, by sector
| Sector | Sites measured | Blocking | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI companies | 128 | 1 | 1% |
| Finance and business media | 94 | 1 | 1% |
| News publishers | 182 | 1 | 1% |
| SaaS platforms | 196 | 1 | 1% |
| Social and media platforms | 115 | 1 | 1% |
| Developer references | 160 | 0 | 0% |
| E-commerce and retail | 92 | 0 | 0% |
| Government and institutions | 98 | 0 | 0% |
| Health publishers | 89 | 0 | 0% |
| Hosting and infrastructure | 98 | 0 | 0% |
| Reference and research | 114 | 0 | 0% |
| SEO and marketing tools | 86 | 0 | 0% |
| Technology media | 126 | 0 | 0% |
| Travel | 86 | 0 | 0% |
Sites blocking Googlebot
afterpay.com, distill.pub, magento.com, reddit.com, todayonline.com.
Sites that allow Googlebot by name
500px.com, abc.net.au, academia.edu, adobe.com, agoda.com, airbnb.com, alibaba.com, amplitude.com, apollo.io, arxiv.org, asahi.com, backlinko.com, bahn.de, barrons.com, bedbathandbeyond.com, beehiiv.com, bestbuy.com, binance.com, blackrock.com, boingboing.net, brandwatch.com, buzzfeednews.com, camelcamelcamel.com, census.gov, channel4.com, cnbc.com, consilium.europa.eu, dailymotion.com, dashlane.com, deepl.com, descript.com, devclass.com, digitaltrends.com, disneyplus.com, docs.gitlab.com, doordash.com, dpreview.com, dw.com, e27.co, ebay.co.uk, and 118 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-Image (image indexing), Googlebot-Video (video indexing), Googlebot-News (news 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 block rate across major websites." Measured 12 November 2026. https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/googlebot/
<a href="https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/googlebot/">Googlebot block rate across major websites, IndexHalo</a>