What is GoogleOther? Google's AI crawler
GoogleOther is the generic crawler Google says various product teams may use to fetch publicly accessible content.
26 of the 389 major websites we measure block GoogleOther in robots.txt (7%), making it number 27 of the 30 AI crawlers we track for how often it is blocked. 24 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 research and development |
| Type | Other. Neither clearly search nor training. |
| robots.txt token | GoogleOther |
| Operator's documentation | Read it here |
What blocking GoogleOther does
Google says crawling preferences addressed to GoogleOther don't affect any specific product.
How to allow or block GoogleOther
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: GoogleOther Disallow: /
User-agent: GoogleOther Allow: /
GoogleOther user agent string
The string Google documents. Version numbers can change, so match on the name.
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; GoogleOther) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36
How to verify a request is really GoogleOther
Anyone can put a crawler's name in a user agent string, so the name alone proves nothing. We did not find a published IP list or reverse DNS rule from Google.
How to whitelist GoogleOther 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 GoogleOther afterwards.
On Cloudflare, also check AI Crawler and Agent access policies, which can block search, agent and training traffic across a site.
Why GoogleOther 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 ~* "GoogleOther") {
return 403;
}Which sites recently changed their rules for GoogleOther?
None that lasted since 17 August 2026. See the full change log.
Who blocks GoogleOther, by sector
| Sector | Sites measured | Blocking | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social and media platforms | 28 | 8 | 29% |
| News publishers | 44 | 8 | 18% |
| Technology media | 25 | 4 | 16% |
| Reference and research | 25 | 3 | 12% |
| E-commerce and retail | 19 | 2 | 11% |
| Travel | 19 | 1 | 5% |
| AI companies | 28 | 0 | 0% |
| Developer references | 34 | 0 | 0% |
| Finance and business media | 29 | 0 | 0% |
| Government and institutions | 19 | 0 | 0% |
| Health publishers | 16 | 0 | 0% |
| Hosting and infrastructure | 23 | 0 | 0% |
| SaaS platforms | 54 | 0 | 0% |
| SEO and marketing tools | 26 | 0 | 0% |
Sites blocking GoogleOther
academia.edu, amazon.com, arstechnica.com, cnn.com, cntraveler.com, disneyplus.com, flickr.com, ft.com, globeandmail.com, hackernoon.com, hulu.com, imdb.com, instacart.com, lemonde.fr, medium.com, nature.com, netflix.com, newyorker.com, pinterest.com, reddit.com, sciencedirect.com, slate.com, telegraph.co.uk, theregister.com, usatoday.com, wired.com.
Sites that allow GoogleOther by name
barrons.com, marketwatch.com, monday.com, render.com, reuters.com, squarespace.com, stability.ai, thetimes.co.uk, wsj.com.
Other Google crawlers
Google-Extended (Gemini training control), Google-CloudVertexBot (Vertex AI on-demand fetch).
See all 30 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. "GoogleOther block rate across major websites." Measured 3 November 2026. https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/googleother/
<a href="https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/googleother/">GoogleOther block rate across major websites, IndexHalo</a>