Google Publisher Center
Google operates the Google Publisher Center fetcher, seen in logs as GoogleProducer, to fetch and process feeds that publishers explicitly supplied for Google News landing pages. Google documents no robots.txt token for it and says it generally ignores robots.txt. Site owners verify requests by reverse DNS with a matching forward lookup, or against Google's published user-triggered-fetchers-google.json IP ranges.
GoogleProducer; (+https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-producer)What Google Publisher Center does
The request appears in logs with the user-agent GoogleProducer; (+https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-producer). Google classes it as a user-triggered fetcher and says the fetch retrieves and processes feeds that publishers explicitly supplied for use in Google News landing pages. Google's documentation names the supplied feed as the target of the fetch, so a site that has not supplied a feed to Publisher Center has no documented reason to expect this user agent.
Because Google says this fetcher generally ignores robots.txt and documents no robots.txt token for it, a Disallow rule is not the documented way to stop it. The practical control is on the publisher side, since the feeds Google fetches are the ones a publisher supplied. Blocking the requests at the server level would stop Google from reading the supplied feed, which affects the Google News landing pages that depend on it; Google's documentation describes no other effect.
Google verifies these requests by reverse DNS. The source IP resolves to a hostname ending in gae.googleusercontent.com (in the form ***-***-***-***.gae.googleusercontent.com) or google.com (google-proxy-***-***-***-***.google.com), and a forward lookup of that hostname returns the same IP. As an alternative, Google publishes the IP ranges in user-triggered-fetchers.json and user-triggered-fetchers-google.json, and a request from within those ranges is genuine.
Operator note. User-triggered fetcher; generally ignores robots.txt.
Controlling Google Publisher Center with robots.txt
Use the token undocumented in robots.txt. Google documents that this fetcher does not consult robots.txt, so a robots rule will not stop it; see the operator note.
User-agent: undocumented
Disallow: /User-agent: undocumented
Allow: /Verifying a request is really Google Publisher Center
Anyone can put GoogleProducer 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>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
Common questions
Should I block Google Publisher Center (GoogleProducer)?
Only if you no longer want Google to read a feed you supplied through Publisher Center. The fetcher exists to process feeds publishers submitted for Google News landing pages, so blocking it stops that processing. Google says it generally ignores robots.txt, so a server-level block is the only documented way to refuse the requests.
How do I verify a GoogleProducer request?
Run a reverse DNS lookup on the source IP. Google says the hostname ends in gae.googleusercontent.com or google.com, and a forward lookup of that name must return the original IP. Alternatively, check the IP against Google's published user-triggered-fetchers.json or user-triggered-fetchers-google.json ranges.
Does GoogleProducer obey robots.txt?
No. Google documents it as a user-triggered fetcher that generally ignores robots.txt, and Google documents no robots.txt token for it. The fetch happens because a publisher explicitly supplied a feed through Publisher Center, so the control is the feed configuration rather than a robots.txt rule.
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.
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