Overview
Google Videos is a search crawler from Google used for search indexing, URL discovery, page rendering, result freshness, and search-quality checks.
Its primary user-agent pattern is Googlebot-Video; related patterns include Google video crawler; a representative HTTP user-agent is Googlebot-Video/1.0.
Google Videos is verified with High confidence. The identity type is Verified Bot, and the evidence basis is official operator documentation.
Google Videos is marked as respecting robots.txt directives for crawler access control.
Google Videos can usually be allowed after confirming the source and monitoring request volume.
Identity
- User-Agent
Googlebot-Video- Aliases
- Google video crawler
- HTTP Agent Examples
Googlebot-Video/1.0- Robots.txt Token
Googlebot-Video- Identity Type
- Verified Bot
- Evidence Method
- Verify Google Videos by matching `Googlebot-Video` to Google evidence, then checking reverse DNS, source-network ownership, signed request data, or published crawler documentation when available.
Classification
- Type
- Search
- Kind
- Crawler
- Family
- Purpose
- indexing
Behavior and handling
- Common Use
- Google Videos is used for search indexing, URL discovery, page rendering, result freshness, and search-quality checks.
- Detection Notes
- Google Videos traffic is primarily detected by the `Googlebot-Video` user-agent pattern; related patterns include `Google video crawler`; a representative HTTP user-agent is `Googlebot-Video/1.0`. Compare source IPs, reverse DNS, request paths, and crawl cadence with Google infrastructure before trusting the traffic.
- Respects robots.txt
- Yes
- Spoofing Risk
- Google Videos has medium spoofing risk because the user-agent can be copied, even when the bot has strong source or documentation support.
- Risk
- Safe
- Recommended Handling
- Depends
Rules and controls
- Robots.txt Snippet
User-agent: Googlebot-Video Disallow: /