Google-CloudVertexBot
Google-CloudVertexBot is a Google crawler; Google says preferences addressed to it affect crawls that site owners request for building Vertex AI Agents and have no effect on Google Search or other products. It obeys robots.txt under the Google-CloudVertexBot token, and a Googlebot rule also applies. Site owners verify it by reverse DNS to googlebot.com or against Google's published common-crawlers.json ranges.
What Google-CloudVertexBot does
In server logs the request carries the substring Google-CloudVertexBot in its User-Agent header. Google documents only that substring and publishes no full user agent string for this crawler. Google's documentation says the crawls covered by this agent are requested by site owners who are building Vertex AI Agents, and that the agent has no effect on Google Search or other products. The purpose category on this entry is the closest available fit; Google's docs do not use the words index or training when describing this bot.
Google lists this agent among its common crawlers, which the docs say always obey robots.txt rules when crawling automatically. A Disallow rule addressed to Google-CloudVertexBot stops those crawls without touching Google Search, because Google states the agent has no effect on Search or other products. A rule addressed to Googlebot also applies to it, so a site that blocks Googlebot blocks this crawler too. Allowing it keeps the site-owner-requested Vertex AI Agents crawls working; blocking it stops those crawls and, per Google's wording, nothing else.
Verification uses the method Google documents for its crawlers. Run a reverse DNS lookup on the requesting IP and confirm the hostname ends in googlebot.com, google.com or googleusercontent.com, then run a forward lookup on that hostname and check it returns the same IP. Google also publishes common-crawlers.json, a machine-readable list of IP ranges, and this crawler is covered because Google lists it as a common crawler. Either check is enough on its own.
Operator note. The docs give only a 'User-Agent substring in HTTP requests' of 'Google-CloudVertexBot'; no full UA string is documented. Robots.txt tokens listed are 'Google-CloudVertexBot' and 'Googlebot', so a Googlebot rule also applies to it. It is listed under common crawlers, which 'always obey robots.txt rules when crawling automatically.' The docs describe it as for 'building Vertex AI Agents' and do not use the words 'index' or 'training' for this bot.
Controlling Google-CloudVertexBot with robots.txt
Use the token Google-CloudVertexBot in robots.txt. Google documents that Google-CloudVertexBot honors robots.txt directives.
User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot
Disallow: /User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot
Allow: /Verifying a request is really Google-CloudVertexBot
Anyone can put Google-CloudVertexBot in a User-Agent header. As a listed common crawler, it is verified by reverse DNS to googlebot.com, google.com, or googleusercontent.com with matching forward DNS, or by matching the source IP against the published common-crawlers.json ranges.
host <request-ip>
# expect a hostname ending in googlebot.com (crawl-***-***-***-***.googlebot.com or geo-crawl-***-***-***-***.geo.googlebot.com)
host <that-hostname>
# expect it to resolve back to <request-ip>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
- 317
- IPv4
- 170
- IPv6
- 147
First entries at fetch time: 2001:4860:4801:10::/64, 2001:4860:4801:11::/64, 2001:4860:4801:12::/64
SHA-256 of the fetched body: 241e712f9c902b33aa4c0cc79268c34cb00c025edbc27298547be298763ddade
Common questions
Should I block Google-CloudVertexBot?
Blocking it only affects crawls that site owners request when building Vertex AI Agents; Google says it has no effect on Google Search or other products. If you do not want your pages fetched for that purpose, add a Disallow rule for Google-CloudVertexBot. A Googlebot rule also covers it, so check that an existing Googlebot block is not stopping crawls you do want.
How do I verify Google-CloudVertexBot?
Reverse DNS the requesting IP and confirm the hostname ends in googlebot.com, google.com or googleusercontent.com, then confirm a forward lookup returns the same IP. Google's documented hostnames take the form crawl-***-***-***-***.googlebot.com or geo-crawl-***-***-***-***.geo.googlebot.com. Alternatively, match the IP against Google's published common-crawlers.json file, which covers this crawler.
What does the Google-CloudVertexBot user agent look like?
Google documents only a User-Agent substring, Google-CloudVertexBot, that appears in HTTP requests. Google publishes no full user agent string, so filter logs on that substring rather than on an exact match. Google lists the crawler under both the Google-CloudVertexBot and Googlebot robots.txt tokens.
Sources
Every fact on this page was checked against Google's own documentation, listed below, and re-checked by a second reviewer before publication. Reviewed September 2026.
Related crawlers
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.