Googlebot Video
Googlebot-Video is Google's crawler for video content; Google says preferences addressed to it affect video-related Google Search features and other products that depend on videos. It obeys robots.txt under the Googlebot-Video token and also matches a Googlebot rule. Site owners verify it by reverse DNS to googlebot.com, google.com or googleusercontent.com, or by matching Google's published common-crawlers.json IP ranges.
Googlebot-Video/1.0What Googlebot Video does
In logs the crawler identifies itself with the user agent string Googlebot-Video/1.0. Google lists it among its common crawlers and states that it honors robots.txt. Google describes its scope in one sentence. Crawling preferences addressed to this agent affect video-related Google Search features and other products that depend on videos, and that is the only description Google's documentation gives of what the fetched pages feed. A site owner reading the logs can take a Googlebot-Video/1.0 request as a fetch connected to those video products.
Blocking Googlebot-Video with a Disallow rule under its own token withholds the affected pages from video-related Google Search features and from the other Google products that depend on videos, without addressing the general Googlebot crawl. The relationship runs one way. A rule addressed to Googlebot also applies to Googlebot-Video, so a site that disallows Googlebot has already disallowed video crawling as well. Site owners who want video features to keep working should check that no blanket Googlebot rule is already in place.
To verify a request, run a reverse DNS lookup on the source IP and confirm the hostname ends in googlebot.com, google.com or googleusercontent.com; Google's documented hostnames take the form crawl-***-***-***-***.googlebot.com or geo-crawl-***-***-***-***.geo.googlebot.com. Then run a forward lookup on that hostname and confirm it resolves back to the same IP. Google also publishes common-crawlers.json, a machine-readable file of IP ranges used by its common crawlers, which covers Googlebot-Video and suits automated checks in a firewall or log pipeline.
Operator note. Common crawler; also matches the Googlebot robots.txt token.
Controlling Googlebot Video with robots.txt
Use the token Googlebot-Video in robots.txt. Google documents that Googlebot Video honors robots.txt directives.
User-agent: Googlebot-Video
Disallow: /User-agent: Googlebot-Video
Allow: /Verifying a request is really Googlebot Video
Anyone can put Googlebot-Video in a User-Agent header. Reverse DNS to googlebot.com, google.com, or googleusercontent.com with matching forward DNS, or match 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 Googlebot-Video?
Only if you do not want your pages used for video-related Google Search features and the other Google products that depend on videos, since Google says that is what preferences addressed to this token affect. Add a Disallow rule under Googlebot-Video to do that. Remember that a rule addressed to Googlebot also applies to this crawler.
How do I verify Googlebot-Video?
Use reverse DNS on the requesting IP and check that the hostname ends in googlebot.com, google.com or googleusercontent.com, then confirm a forward lookup returns the same IP. Alternatively, match the IP against common-crawlers.json, Google's published range file for its common crawlers. A user agent string reading Googlebot-Video/1.0 on its own is not proof.
What user agent does Googlebot-Video send?
Google documents the user agent string as Googlebot-Video/1.0, with Googlebot-Video as the token to match in logs and in robots.txt. Google lists it as a common crawler, and a robots.txt rule addressed to Googlebot applies to it as well, so check both tokens when reviewing an existing robots.txt file.
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.