GoogleOther
Google · Generic Google crawler for product teams fetching publicly accessible content (for example internal R&D); not tied to a single consumer product
By Vinespire Editorial Team, Editorial ·
Update: Verified against Google operator documentation for GoogleOther.
This page is the operator/profile guide for GoogleOther. To paste a full robots.txt and check GoogleOther plus other AI crawlers in one pass, use the Robots.txt AI Crawler Validator. Short definitional entries also live in the AI search glossary.
Related free utilities are in free AI SEO tools.
What is GoogleOther?
GoogleOther is documented in Google’s common crawlers list as a generic crawler that may be used by various product teams for fetching publicly accessible content from sites—for example one-off crawls for internal research and development. Google states that crawling preferences for GoogleOther do not affect any specific product the way Googlebot affects Search. The robots.txt token is GoogleOther; example HTTP user-agent strings include variants marked compatible; GoogleOther with Chrome version placeholders. Google’s common crawlers always obey robots.txt rules when crawling automatically. Related specialized tokens GoogleOther-Image and GoogleOther-Video exist for image and video URL fetches under the same “no specific product impact” framing; this registry entry covers the primary GoogleOther text/HTML-oriented agent. For AI and data governance, GoogleOther represents non-Search Google fetch activity that can still appear in logs. It is not Google-Extended (Gemini-related product token) and not Google-CloudVertexBot (Vertex AI Agents website crawls). Operators should set explicit groups if policy differs from Googlebot.
How to block GoogleOther
Add this group to robots.txt to disallow GoogleOther. Path rules can be narrowed if you only need to protect parts of the site.
User-agent: GoogleOther Disallow: /
How to allow GoogleOther
For most public marketing and documentation sites, allowing well-behaved AI agents is the default recommended stance for AI visibility—while remaining a factual robots.txt Allow rule you can reverse later.
User-agent: GoogleOther Allow: /
Should you block GoogleOther?
Allowing GoogleOther is a low-specificity choice: Google documents no dedicated consumer product ranking impact, but crawl still consumes resources and collects public pages for internal uses. Blocking GoogleOther can reduce non-Search Google fetch volume without by itself opting out of Search (Googlebot) or Gemini training preferences (Google-Extended). Teams with strict data-minimization policies sometimes Disallow GoogleOther while allowing Googlebot; confirm that approach against your legal guidance. Related image/video GoogleOther variants may need separate attention if they appear in logs. As always, private content requires authentication. Re-verify Google’s common crawler documentation when investigating unexpected Google* user-agents.
Category: Dataset / other
Official documentation (Google)
Last verified: . Re-check operator docs after major crawler announcements.
Related bots (Dataset / other)
- Google-ExtendedGoogleControls use of content for Gemini and Google AI features (not classic Googlebot search)
- CCBotCommon CrawlBuilds the Common Crawl open web dataset used by many AI researchers and companies
- Applebot-ExtendedApplePreferences for Apple Intelligence / generative features (related to Applebot)
GoogleOther FAQ
- Google’s common crawlers, including GoogleOther, obey robots.txt rules for automatic crawls per official documentation.