User-triggered fetcher · Google
Gemini Notebook user agent, IP ranges and robots.txt
Gemini Notebook is Google's user-triggered fetcher. It identifies itself with the Google-GeminiNotebook user-agent token, does not consult robots.txt according to its operator, and runs from 496 published IP prefixes.
- Operator
- Reviewed
- September 2026
- Sources
- 3
- Operator
- User-agent token
- Google-GeminiNotebook
- Purpose
- User-triggered fetcher
- robots.txt token
- undocumented
- Honors robots.txt
- No, per the operator
- Published IP ranges
- Yes, 496 prefixes (248 IPv4, 248 IPv6)
- Verification
- Reverse DNS with matching forward DNS, or match the source IP against user-triggered-fetchers.json or user-triggered-fetchers-google.json.
- Reverse DNS suffix
- gae.googleusercontent.com (***-***-***-***.gae.googleusercontent.com) or google.com (google-proxy-***-***-***-***.google.com)
- Full user-agent example
- Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/137.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 (compatible; Google-GeminiNotebook; +https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-gemininotebook)
Block or allow Gemini Notebook in robots.txt
User-agent: undocumented
Disallow: /User-agent: undocumented
Allow: /Verify a request is really Gemini Notebook
Anyone can put Google-GeminiNotebook in a User-Agent header. Reverse DNS with matching forward DNS, or match the source IP against user-triggered-fetchers.json or user-triggered-fetchers-google.json.
host <request-ip>
# expect a hostname ending in gae.googleusercontent.com (***-***-***-***.gae.googleusercontent.com) or google.com (google-proxy-***-***-***-***.google.com)
host <that-hostname>
# expect it to resolve back to <request-ip>Published IP ranges
Google publishes a machine-readable list. Our probe read it on 2026-09-06; the file's own creation time was 2026-09-04.
- Prefixes
- 496
- IPv4
- 248
- IPv6
- 248
First entries at fetch time: 2001:4860:4801:4004::/64, 2001:4860:4801:4008::/64, 2001:4860:4801:4009::/64
SHA-256 of the fetched body: 5590a1a5d2fbe83872191aa2d8d45e9c854c56c49b742df9d33b7612f5482a5a
What Gemini Notebook does
Google operates the Gemini Notebook fetcher, which requests individual URLs that Gemini Notebook users have provided as sources for their projects. It is a user-triggered fetcher that generally ignores robots.txt, and Google documents no robots token. Site owners verify it by reverse DNS to gae.googleusercontent.com or google.com with a matching forward lookup, or against Google's user-triggered-fetchers IP range file.
Requests appear with a Chrome-style user agent that carries the token Google-GeminiNotebook and a link to Google's fetcher documentation. A mobile variant with an Android Chrome string exists as well. Each request is for a single URL that a Gemini Notebook user provided to a project as a source, so requests are triggered by users rather than by an automated crawl. Google's changelog of 2026-07-16 records that NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook and that the former Google-NotebookLM agent is supported until August 2026, so the older token may still appear in logs until then.
Google classifies this as a user-triggered fetcher and says such fetchers generally ignore robots.txt. No robots.txt token is documented, so there is no rule a site owner can write to opt out through that file. Blocking at the server or firewall level is the remaining option, and doing so stops Gemini Notebook users from loading the site's pages as sources in their projects. The documented purpose is retrieving sources for users; Google does not document any indexing role for this fetcher.
Verification uses reverse DNS with a matching forward lookup. A reverse DNS lookup on the requesting IP should return a hostname of the form ***-***-***-***.gae.googleusercontent.com or google-proxy-***-***-***-***.google.com, and a forward lookup on that hostname should return the same IP. Google also publishes the user-triggered-fetchers-google.json range file, which a site owner can check directly. Nothing in Google's documentation for this fetcher describes JavaScript execution or crawl rate.
Operator note. User-triggered fetcher; generally ignores robots.txt. The former agent 'Google-NotebookLM' is 'supported until August 2026' (changelog 2026-07-16: NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook). Mobile UA: 'Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; K) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/138.0.0.0 Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Google-GeminiNotebook; +https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-gemininotebook)'.
Common questions
- Should I block Gemini Notebook?
- Only if you do not want Gemini Notebook users to load your pages as project sources. Google documents no robots.txt token for it and says user-triggered fetchers generally ignore robots.txt, so blocking has to happen at the server or network level using the verified hostnames or the published IP range file.
- How do I verify Google-GeminiNotebook?
- Run a reverse DNS lookup on the requesting IP and confirm the hostname ends in gae.googleusercontent.com or google.com, then run a forward lookup on that hostname and check it returns the same IP. As an alternative, match the IP against Google's user-triggered-fetchers-google.json file.
- Does Gemini Notebook respect robots.txt?
- No. Google states that user-triggered fetchers generally ignore robots.txt, and no robots.txt token is documented for Google-GeminiNotebook, so there is no directive you can write for it. Control has to happen at the server level after verifying the request.
Sources
The operator documentation used for this entry. Recorded review date September 2026; consult the linked pages for current policy and compare them with this dated snapshot.
This registry documents how operators describe their own bots so site owners can identify and control them. It does not publish third-party IP lists or guess at undocumented behaviour. To see how your own site responds to automated visitors, the bot detection scanner reads a URL's live response and names the protection it finds.