Skip to content

Crawler

What is GoogleOther?

GoogleOther is the generic crawler Google teams use for research and development crawls.

Other botsFollows robots.txtIP list
Operator
Google
Purpose
Other bots. Ads checks, SEO tools and research crawls. Not AI training or AI search.
robots.txt token
GoogleOther
Sample user agent
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; GoogleOther) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36User agents change with versions. Match on the token, not the full string.
Follows robots.txt
Yes, according to Google. Google says its common crawlers always respect robots.txt rules for automatic crawls.
How to verify
Check the IP against Google's published list.Reverse DNS on googlebot.com or google.com, confirmed with a forward lookup.
Sources
Google documentationGoogle IP list
Last reviewed

Allow or block GoogleOther

Block GoogleOther
User-agent: GoogleOther
Disallow: /

Asks GoogleOther not to crawl any page. Well-behaved crawlers stop; it does not stop anyone who ignores robots.txt.

Allow GoogleOther
User-agent: GoogleOther
Allow: /

Lets GoogleOther crawl everything. You only need this if a broader rule would otherwise block it.

Should you block it?

GoogleOther is not an AI training or AI search crawler. Block it only if you don't want Google's product to read your pages.

Write a full policy with the AI Crawler Policy Generator

How to verify a GoogleOther request

  1. Find the IP address of the request in your server or CDN logs.
  2. Get Google's published list (Google IP list).
  3. Check whether the IP falls inside one of the ranges. If it doesn't, the request is not from GoogleOther, whatever its user agent says.

Or with reverse DNS

  1. Run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP (host 192.0.2.1, with the IP from your log).
  2. Check the hostname ends in googlebot.com or google.com.
  3. Run a forward lookup on that hostname and check it returns the same IP. Both steps must pass.
Test GoogleOther requests

Questions about GoogleOther

Is GoogleOther safe to allow?

GoogleOther reads public pages; it does not log in or submit forms. Whether to allow it depends on whether you want Google's product to use your pages.

How do I know a request is really GoogleOther?

Check the request against what Google publishes: Check the IP against Google's published list. Reverse DNS on googlebot.com or google.com, confirmed with a forward lookup. The user agent alone proves nothing.

How often does GoogleOther visit?

It depends on your site; Google doesn't publish a schedule. Referscope shows the real visits.

Related crawlers

All AI crawlers

Free tools for GoogleOther

AI Crawler Policy Generator

Build a robots.txt that blocks AI training and keeps AI search and Google.

Build your robots.txt

AI Bot Verification Tester

Paste an IP and user agent from your logs and see if the bot is real.

Verify a bot

robots.txt Checker

See which AI crawlers your robots.txt allows or blocks.

Check robots.txt

Less guessing. Clearer growth.

Connect your site today and see your first verified AI crawler by tomorrow.

Explore ReferscopeBecome a design partner