What it does
Google-GeminiNotebook is Google's user action crawler. A live fetch made because a human asked the assistant about your page right now. Closest thing to a real visitor; several of these (Perplexity-User, meta-externalfetcher) ignore robots.txt by design because the request is user-initiated.
Fetches individual URLs that Gemini Notebook users add as sources. RENAME of Google-NotebookLM — Google lists the old token as a former agent supported only until August 2026, so match BOTH during the transition and expect the old one to die. Generally ignores robots.txt (user-triggered).
Full UA: not captured in our July 2026 roster review — match log hits on the token Google-GeminiNotebook (case-insensitive substring) and verify by IP before acting.
How to verify a hit is really Google-GeminiNotebook
Verification method (July 2026): Published IP list: https://developers.google.com/static/crawling/ipranges/user-triggered-fetchers.json (fetched live 2026-08-22)
Strongest available check: the vendor publishes the crawler's egress IPs. Fetch the list, then confirm the hit's source IP falls inside it — a UA match from any other IP is a spoofer.
User-agent strings are freely spoofed, so a UA match alone proves nothing. Full step-by-step method: verify by IP.
Allow or block in robots.txt
Match the exact token Google-GeminiNotebook in robots.txt:
# Block Google-GeminiNotebook site-wide
User-agent: Google-GeminiNotebook
Disallow: /# Explicitly allow Google-GeminiNotebook
User-agent: Google-GeminiNotebook
Allow: /For the allow-search-block-training combined pattern (and the Allow-directive gotcha that silently kills carve-outs), see the robots.txt guide. robots.txt governs whether Google-GeminiNotebook may fetch; llms.txt is the separate, curated map AI assistants read once allowed in.
Vendor documentation: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-user-triggered-fetchers
The Google family
Google operates 5 distinct tokens in this roster, and they do not block each other: a robots.txt line for Google-GeminiNotebook does nothing to its siblings — each needs its own User-agent: entry (the robots.txt guide has combined patterns).
| Token | Role | robots.txt |
|---|---|---|
| Google-Extended | Training | honors robots.txt |
| GoogleOther | Training | honors robots.txt |
| Google-CloudVertexBot | User action | honors robots.txt |
| Google-Agent | User action | ignores robots.txt |
Frequently asked questions
What is Google-GeminiNotebook?
Google-GeminiNotebook is Google's user action crawler. A live fetch made because a human asked the assistant about your page right now. Closest thing to a real visitor; several of these (Perplexity-User, meta-externalfetcher) ignore robots.txt by design because the request is user-initiated.
Does Google-GeminiNotebook respect robots.txt?
No — Google-GeminiNotebook does not treat robots.txt as binding. Blocking it requires WAF or IP-level rules.
How do I block Google-GeminiNotebook?
robots.txt cannot stop Google-GeminiNotebook; block it with WAF or IP-level firewall rules instead.
How do I verify Google-GeminiNotebook traffic by IP?
Fetch Google's published IP list for Google-GeminiNotebook and confirm the hit's source IP falls inside it — a Google-GeminiNotebook user-agent from any other IP is a spoofer.
Related bots
Same vendor, then other user-action fetchers — the full directory profiles all 34.