AI crawler · Google
Google-CloudVertexBot: what it is and how to block it
Google-CloudVertexBot crawls a site when its owner asks Google Cloud to build a Vertex AI agent from it. Google says blocking it has no effect on Google Search or other products.
BrandVector Editorial · Last verified Oct 8, 2026
- Operator
- Type
- Owner-requested
- robots.txt token
Google-CloudVertexBot- Follows robots.txt
- Yes, per Google
- IP ranges
- Published
- Blocked by name
- 4.5% of top sites
What is Google-CloudVertexBot?
Google-CloudVertexBot is Google's owner-requested crawler: it crawls a site only when its owner sets up an AI product that uses it. In Google's words:
“Crawling preferences addressed to the Google-CloudVertexBot user agent affect crawls requested by the site owners' for building Vertex AI Agents.”
Google-CloudVertexBot user agent string
Google documents this user agent string for Google-CloudVertexBot:
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/144.0.7559.132 Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Google-CloudVertexBot; +https://cloud.google.com/enterprise-search)
In robots.txt, use the token Google-CloudVertexBot, not the full string. Crawlers match on the token, and version numbers in the full string can change.
How many websites block Google-CloudVertexBot?
In our Oct 8, 2026 check of 817 of the most-visited websites, 4.5% block Google-CloudVertexBot by name for their whole site (37 sites).
| robots.txt rule for Google-CloudVertexBot | Sites | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Blocks the whole site by name | 37 | 4.5% |
| Blocks part of the site by name | 8 | 1.0% |
| Names it but doesn't block it | 0 | 0.0% |
| Blocked only by a catch-all (*) rule | 35 | 4.3% |
For comparison, 0.1% of the same sites block Googlebot by name. The sites are the top 1,000 origins in the Chrome UX Report for August 2026; see how we measured.
How to block Google-CloudVertexBot in robots.txt
Add this group to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain to block Google-CloudVertexBot from your whole site:
User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot Disallow: /
To block only part of your site, list those paths instead:
User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot Disallow: /private/
A group that names Google-CloudVertexBot replaces your User-agent: * rules for it entirely (RFC 9309). If your catch-all group blocks paths that Google-CloudVertexBot should also stay out of, repeat them in its group. To let Google-CloudVertexBot in while a catch-all rule blocks others:
User-agent: * Disallow: / User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot Allow: /
“They always obey robots.txt rules when crawling automatically.”
What happens if you block Google-CloudVertexBot?
“It has no effect on Google Search or other products.”
How to verify requests from Google-CloudVertexBot
Google publishes the IP addresses Google-CloudVertexBot uses. Check a request's IP address against that list before trusting its user agent, which any client can fake.
Other Google crawlers
- Google-Extended · Control token
- Google-Agent · User-triggered
See every AI crawler and how often top sites block it
Sources
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