Quick answer: there isn’t one “official number”
Most people mean “How many Google user agents might hit my site?” Google’s current documentation groups them into three buckets: common crawlers, special-case crawlers, and user-triggered fetchers. Each list is described as not exhaustive, because Google runs many requestors and product-specific clients.
What people call “Googlebot” vs. Google’s full crawler ecosystem
In logs, “Googlebot” is usually one of the two core Search crawlers (desktop or smartphone). But Google also runs other crawlers for images, video, Shopping, Ads, abuse detection, and user-triggered tools (like Search Console verification).
| Category | What it does | How it behaves |
|---|---|---|
| Common crawlers | Core crawling for Google products (including Search) | Respects robots.txt for automatic crawls |
| Special-case crawlers | Product-specific crawling with an agreement (ex: Ads) | May ignore global * group rules |
| User-triggered fetchers | Fetches initiated by users (ex: site verification) | Often ignore robots.txt because the user requested the fetch |
Common Google crawlers you’ll see in logs (2026 list)
These are the “workhorse” crawlers Google documents for common products. In practice, these are the user agents most site owners run into when investigating crawl spikes or indexing behavior.
| Crawler / token | What it’s for | What it looks like in logs (example) |
|---|---|---|
| Googlebot Googlebot |
Core Search crawler (Desktop + Smartphone variants) | … (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) |
| Googlebot-Image Googlebot-Image |
Fetches image URLs for Google surfaces that show images | Googlebot-Image/1.0 |
| Googlebot-Video Googlebot-Video |
Video-focused crawling for video-related features | Googlebot-Video/1.0 |
| Googlebot-News Googlebot-News |
News crawling (token exists even though it may not have a unique UA string) | Crawling can occur via various Googlebot strings |
| Storebot-Google Storebot-Google |
Shopping surfaces (StoreBot) | … Storebot-Google/1.0 … |
| Google-InspectionTool Google-InspectionTool |
Search testing tools (Rich Results Test, URL Inspection) | … (compatible; Google-InspectionTool/1.0;) |
| GoogleOther GoogleOther |
Generic crawler used by product teams (not Search ranking) | … (compatible; GoogleOther) |
| GoogleOther-Image GoogleOther-Image |
GoogleOther optimized for image URLs | GoogleOther-Image/1.0 |
| GoogleOther-Video GoogleOther-Video |
GoogleOther optimized for video URLs | GoogleOther-Video/1.0 |
| Google-CloudVertexBot Google-CloudVertexBot |
Crawls requested by site owners building Vertex AI Agents | Google-CloudVertexBot |
| Google-Extended Google-Extended |
Control token for whether content can be used for future Gemini training / grounding | Token only; uses other Google UAs for crawling |
Special-case crawlers (Ads / AdSense / abuse)
Special-case crawlers are associated with products where there’s an agreement about the crawl process. Google notes these may ignore the global * robots group.
| Token | Typical purpose | Example user agent |
|---|---|---|
| APIs-Google APIs-Google |
Push notification delivery for Google APIs | APIs-Google (+https://developers.google.com/webmasters/APIs-Google.html) |
| AdsBot-Google-Mobile AdsBot-Google-Mobile |
Ad quality checking (mobile web) | … (compatible; AdsBot-Google-Mobile; +http://www.google.com/mobile/adsbot.html) |
| AdsBot-Google AdsBot-Google |
Ad quality checking | AdsBot-Google (+http://www.google.com/adsbot.html) |
| Mediapartners-Google Mediapartners-Google |
AdSense crawler for relevant ad provisioning | (compatible; Mediapartners-Google/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) |
| Google-Safety Google-Safety |
Abuse-specific crawling (ex: malware discovery) | Google-Safety |
User-triggered fetchers (you’ll see these during setup & tools)
User-triggered fetchers often show up when someone is configuring something (verification, feeds, tools). Because the fetch is requested by a user, Google notes these generally ignore robots.txt rules.
| User agent | When you see it | Example |
|---|---|---|
| FeedFetcher-Google | RSS/Atom feed retrieval (News / WebSub) | FeedFetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html) |
| GoogleProducer | Publisher Center feeds for Google News landing pages | GoogleProducer; (+https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-producer) |
| Google-Read-Aloud | Read Aloud (TTS) requests | … (compatible; Google-Read-Aloud; +https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1061943) |
| Google-Site-Verification | Search Console verification token fetch | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Google-Site-Verification/1.0) |
| Google-CWS | Chrome Web Store metadata URLs | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Google-CWS) |
| Google-NotebookLM | NotebookLM user-provided sources | Google-NotebookLM |
| Google-Pinpoint | Pinpoint user-specified sources | Google-Pinpoint |
How to verify “Googlebot” is real (spoofing is common)
User agent strings are easy to fake. Google recommends verifying suspicious requests using reverse DNS and forward DNS checks. If you’re doing this at scale, match IPs against Google’s published IP range JSON files.
Reverse DNS lookup
Take the IP from your logs and run a reverse lookup (ex: host 66.249.66.1).
Check the domain
Confirm the hostname ends in googlebot.com, google.com, or googleusercontent.com.
Forward DNS lookup
Resolve that hostname back to an IP and confirm it matches your original log IP.
Scale it (optional)
For automation, compare request IPs to Google’s published crawler IP ranges (JSON lists).
FAQ: Googlebot crawlers, user agents, and robots.txt
Common questions site owners ask when trying to identify Google crawlers, control crawling, and interpret server logs.
So… how many Googlebot crawlers are there in 2026? +
There isn’t a single fixed “official number.” Google documents multiple crawler and fetcher user agents across Search, Shopping, Ads, abuse/security, and user-triggered tools. The practical approach is to use the documented tokens above (Common / Special-case / User-triggered) and treat the lists as a maintained reference rather than a permanently correct count.
Which Google user agents should I allow in robots.txt? +
Most sites manage crawling by setting rules for Googlebot (and optionally Googlebot-Image / Googlebot-Video). Special-case crawlers (AdsBot, Mediapartners) may behave differently and can ignore the global * group.
If your intent is to manage AI training usage, use Google-Extended as the control token.
Why do I see “GoogleOther” in logs? +
GoogleOther is documented as a generic crawler that may be used by various Google teams to fetch publicly accessible content. It’s not the same as core Search crawling behavior, and it doesn’t imply ranking impact by itself.
How do I know a request is really from Google? +
Verify it. Google recommends a reverse DNS lookup, validate the domain, then forward DNS back to the original IP. For scale, match IPs against Google’s published JSON IP ranges for crawlers/fetchers.
Can Potent Pages help me reduce bot load without harming SEO? +
Yes. We help teams classify bot traffic, verify authentic Google crawling, and implement safer controls (rate limiting, caching, edge rules, monitoring) so legitimate indexing continues while unnecessary load is reduced.
