Google-Extended
A robots.txt control token, not a crawler. It tells Google whether it may use your pages to train Gemini and to ground answers in some of its other systems.
Last verified: October 2026, against Google's own documentation.
Google-Extended at a glance.
- Owner
- Purpose
- Training. Google describes Google-Extended as a standalone product token that controls whether content it crawls may be used to train future Gemini models that power Gemini Apps and the Vertex AI API for Gemini, and for grounding in Gemini Apps and Grounding with Google Search on Vertex AI. Google says it doesn't affect inclusion in Google Search and isn't a Search ranking signal.
- robots.txt token
Google-Extended- Full user agent
- Not published.
Google says Google-Extended has no separate HTTP user-agent string. Crawling is done with Google's existing user agents, and the token is used only in robots.txt.
- IP ranges
- Google's crawler verification guide
Not applicable: Google-Extended doesn't crawl. The fetches come from Google's existing crawlers, which you can verify with Google's published ranges and reverse DNS.
- Respects robots.txt?
- robots.txt token only. It only exists in robots.txt. A Google-Extended rule is how you tell Google your preference.
The robots.txt rules to copy.
Your robots.txt lives at the root of your domain, like yoursite.com/robots.txt. On Shopify you edit it by adding a robots.txt.liquid template to your theme. Shopify warns that a wrong edit can cost you all your traffic, so change one rule at a time.
Allow Google-Extended
User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /A bot with no rule is already allowed. Add this only when a broader rule, such as User-agent: * with Disallow: /, would otherwise block it.
Block Google-Extended
User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /Robots.txt rules apply per host. Repeat them on each subdomain you want covered.
Should you block Google-Extended on a local business site or a Shopify store?
Google says blocking Google-Extended doesn't affect whether you appear in Google Search or how you rank. Google's own page on AI Overviews and AI Mode says those features follow Googlebot and the normal snippet controls, and points to Google-Extended for its other systems.
Blocking Google-Extended doesn't take you out of AI Overviews. What it limits is Gemini training, and grounding in Gemini Apps and in Grounding with Google Search on Vertex AI. For most small business sites I'd rather Gemini know the facts than opt out.
A rule you didn't write can block it too: an old robots.txt template, a security plugin or a CDN bot setting. The AI crawler checker reads your robots.txt for Google-Extended and the other bots in this directory.
The 12 bots, sorted by job
-
Search and answers
3 bots
They build the index an AI assistant searches when it answers.
If you block themPer their owners, blocking one can drop you from that assistant's search answers.
-
Fetching a page when a user asks
3 bots
They fetch your page because a person asked the assistant about it.
If you block themBlocked at your firewall, the assistant can't read your page for the person who asked. Two of the three may not follow a robots.txt block.
-
Google-Extended is in this group
Model training
6 bots
A block here tells the owner to keep your pages out of AI model training. CCBot is here because its open archive can be used that way.
- GPTBot
- ClaudeBot
- Google-Extended
- CCBot
- Applebot-Extended
- Meta-ExternalAgent
If you block themFor most, the owner says blocking doesn't remove you from its search features. Meta says its crawler also indexes content for its products.
Related crawlers.
Sources
Last verified: October 2026. Where the owner doesn't document something, this page says so instead of guessing.
Crawler access is the first thing I check in an AI answer audit. Most of what decides who gets named is what other sites say about you.