Other, run by Google.

What is GoogleOther? Google's crawler outside search and AI. Verifiable by IP ranges and reverse DNS.

Run by Google.
Purpose: Other. A visit means the crawler fetched your page for its own job, outside search rankings and AI answers.
robots.txt name: GoogleOther.
Verifiable by IP ranges and reverse DNS.

At a glance, the facts in one table.

GoogleOther at a glance. Taken from SenseGap's open bot directory, the same data that sorts every visit in the dashboard.

GoogleOther facts
	GoogleOther
Operator	Google
Purpose	Other
User agent contains	`GoogleOther`
robots.txt name	`GoogleOther`
Verification	IP ranges + Reverse DNS
Documentation	None listed

Purpose, what it does and why it came.

What GoogleOther does. SenseGap sorts every visit by purpose. GoogleOther is in the Other group.

GoogleOther is Google's crawler for purposes other than search or AI answers. Google describes GoogleOther as a generic crawler its product teams use for one-off crawls and research, separate from Search.

What a visit means

A visit means the crawler fetched your page for its own job, outside search rankings and AI answers.

Detection, the header SenseGap matches.

How SenseGap recognizes GoogleOther. By its User-Agent header. A separate check then decides whether the visit is real.

Every request carries a User-Agent header naming the software that sent it. SenseGap counts a request as GoogleOther when that header contains GoogleOther, in any letter case. The header is plain text, so any script can copy it. Matching the name is where recognition starts, not where trust starts.

Pattern matched against User-Agent

/GoogleOther/i

Verification, how to tell a real visit from a fake.

How to verify GoogleOther. Google publishes its IP ranges and DNS names, so a real visit can be proven.

How we verify bots

IP ranges

googlebot.json

Published by Google at developers.google.com. A real GoogleOther visit comes from an address in this list.

Open the list

SenseGap

Checked on every visit

SenseGap runs both checks on every visit that claims to be GoogleOther, IP ranges first, then reverse DNS confirmed by a forward lookup. A pass is marked Real. A visit that sends the name and fails is marked Fake, and stays out of your other reports.

01
Look up the visiting address
Run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP address the request came from. It returns a hostname.
02
Check the hostname
The hostname must end in .googlebot.com, .google.com or .googleusercontent.com. Anything else is not GoogleOther.
```
*.googlebot.com
*.google.com
*.googleusercontent.com
```
03
Look the hostname up again
Run a forward lookup on that hostname. It must return the same IP address, otherwise the reverse record could have been set by anyone.

The same check from a terminal

$ host <visiting-ip>
… domain name pointer <hostname>.googlebot.com.

$ host <hostname>.googlebot.com
<hostname>.googlebot.com has address <visiting-ip>

robots.txt, rules you can copy.

Block or allow GoogleOther in robots.txt. Its robots.txt name is GoogleOther. Paste a group into the robots.txt at your site's root.

Block the whole site

User-agent: GoogleOther
Disallow: /

Allow the whole site

User-agent: GoogleOther
Allow: /

Block one folder

User-agent: GoogleOther
Disallow: /private/

One rule catches people out. Under the robots.txt standard (RFC 9309), a crawler that finds a group naming it follows only that group and ignores your User-agent: * rules. If you add a GoogleOther group, repeat in it anything from the catch-all group you still want applied.

robots.txt is a request, not a lock. To enforce a block, match the User-Agent header at your server or CDN. In nginx:

Enforce it at the server

# nginx, inside a server block
if ($http_user_agent ~* "GoogleOther") {
    return 403;
}

SenseGap reads your robots.txt and shows, bot by bot, what you allow and which bots fetched pages you disallowed. See what you get.

Trade-off, what blocking changes.

Should you block GoogleOther? It depends on what you want from Google. Here is what each choice means.

If you allow it
The service the crawler supports keeps working with your site.
If you block it
The service the crawler supports may stop working with your site.

Google, every bot it runs.

More bots from Google. Google runs 8 bots in the directory, each with its own job.

FAQ, GoogleOther in short answers.

GoogleOther, answered plainly

What is GoogleOther?

GoogleOther is Google's crawler for purposes other than search or AI answers. Google describes GoogleOther as a generic crawler its product teams use for one-off crawls and research, separate from Search.

Who runs GoogleOther?

Google. SenseGap's directory has no documentation link for it yet.

What does a visit from GoogleOther mean?

A visit means the crawler fetched your page for its own job, outside search rankings and AI answers.

What user agent does GoogleOther use?

Its User-Agent header contains "GoogleOther". SenseGap matches it regardless of letter case.

How do I block GoogleOther?

Add "User-agent: GoogleOther" followed by "Disallow: /" to your robots.txt. robots.txt is a request, not a lock; to enforce it, block the user agent at your server or CDN.

How do I know a visit is really GoogleOther?

Google publishes the IP ranges GoogleOther uses (googlebot.json), so check that the visiting address falls inside one of them. You can also run a reverse DNS lookup on the address: the hostname must end in .googlebot.com, .google.com or .googleusercontent.com, and a forward lookup of that hostname must return the same address. SenseGap runs these checks on every visit.

Does Google publish IP ranges for GoogleOther?

Yes, at https://developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/googlebot.json.

What happens if I block GoogleOther?

The service the crawler supports may stop working with your site.

See whether GoogleOther visits your site. SenseGap records every visit, checks whether it's real, and shows which pages it read.

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