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Tracking ChatGPT · Perplexity · Claude · Google AI Overviews
  1. Rankwise
  2. /AI crawlers
  3. /Googlebot
Google · Search index

Googlebot

Google's main crawler. It feeds Google Search, including all Search features, and other Google products.

Source: developers.google.com
Check your robots.txt for AI crawlers

Operator

Google

Job

Search index

Builds the index an AI answer searches. Block it and you drop out of that product's results.

robots.txt

Follows robots.txt

Google says its common crawlers always obey robots.txt rules when crawling automatically.

Source: developers.google.com
User agent

How it identifies itself

Copied from the vendor's documentation. Version numbers inside these strings change over time, so match on the token rather than the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36
Source: developers.google.com
robots.txt

Allow or block Googlebot

Add one of these groups to the robots.txt at the root of your domain.

A crawler obeys only the most specific group that names it (RFC 9309), so a named group does not inherit the rules under User-agent: *. Repeat any paths you keep private, as the example does with /admin/.

Allow Googlebot
User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /
Disallow: /admin/
Block Googlebot
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /
What tryrankwise.com does

We name Googlebot and let it in

Read from the robots.txt we serve. We want AI engines to read and cite this site, so every AI crawler is allowed everywhere except the app, the API and the sign-in pages (/dashboard/, /api/, /login, /signup, /sign-in, /sign-up). The file also declares Content-Signal: ai-train=yes, search=yes, ai-input=yes.

tryrankwise.com/robots.txt
User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /login
Disallow: /signup
Disallow: /sign-in
Disallow: /sign-up

See the whole file. The same rules repeat in every group, because a crawler that matches a named group ignores the wildcard one.

Worth knowing

More from Google

  • Google names robots.txt rules for Googlebot as the control for AI features in Search. To limit what is shown, it points to nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex.

    Source: developers.google.com
  • W.X.Y.Z in the strings above stands for the Chrome version, which changes.

    Source: developers.google.com
Other Google crawlers
Google-ExtendedModel training
AI engines it matters for
GeminiHow it picks sources, and what Rankwise measures on it
Google AI OverviewsHow it picks sources, and what Rankwise measures on it
Google AI ModeHow it picks sources, and what Rankwise measures on it

Sources, checked 2026-09-24

  • developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-common-crawlers
  • developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features
Check your own file

See which AI crawlers your robots.txt lets in.

The free AI crawler checker reads your robots.txt and reports which of the major AI crawlers it allows or blocks. No signup.
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