Overview
Googlebot-News is a robots.txt control token associated with Google.
No standalone HTTP request User-Agent. Google News crawling uses various Googlebot HTTP request User-Agent strings; Googlebot-News is the robots.txt token.
Do not treat this token as proof that an HTTP request came from the operator. Verify the underlying crawler traffic using the operator’s documented methods.
Identity
- Aliases
- Google News crawler token
- HTTP Agent Examples
-
No standalone HTTP request User-Agent. Google News crawling uses various Googlebot HTTP request User-Agent strings; Googlebot-News is the robots.txt token. - Robots Token
- Googlebot-News
- Identity Type
- Control token
- Evidence Method
- Use `Googlebot-News` as the documented robots.txt control token. Verify underlying crawler requests separately with Google documentation and network or request-level verification where available.
Classification
- Type
- Control token
- Kind
- Robots control
- Family
- Purpose
- News crawl control
Behavior and handling
- Common Use
- Googlebot-News is used for search indexing, URL discovery, page rendering, result freshness, and search-quality checks.
- Detection Notes
- Googlebot-News is not a standalone HTTP request User-Agent. Do not detect network traffic by matching `Googlebot-News` in request User-Agent strings unless independent current evidence documents such a request signature.
- Respects robots.txt
- Yes
- Spoofing Risk
- Googlebot-News is a publisher control token, not an authenticated request identity. A request string containing the token is not proof of operator origin.
- Risk
- Safe
- Recommended Handling
- Depends
Rules and controls
- Robots.txt Snippet
-
User-agent: Googlebot-News Disallow: /
Relationships
- Operator
- Google Checked 2026-08-07
Relationships without an Evidence link are normalized from the canonical directory record. They should not be interpreted as independent proof of physical presence or request origin.