Googlebot-News
A robots.txt token for Google News, not a separate crawler — the fetching is done by Googlebot.
At a glance
- Operator
- Category
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Search engine
A classic search crawler whose index also feeds that company's AI answers. Blocking it removes you from both the blue links and the AI summaries above them.
- User-Agent token
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None — this is a robots.txt control token, not a crawler.
Google fetches with its own crawler and reads this token only to decide what it may then do with the result. No request ever carries the name
Googlebot-News, so it will never appear in your access logs no matter how often your content is used. - robots.txt token
Googlebot-News- Respects robots.txt
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Documented as compliant
Because this is a control token rather than a crawler, it will never appear as a hit in your logs. MetaPilot shows it as "policy only" for exactly that reason.
- Operator docs
- developers.google.com
What Googlebot-News does
Should you block Googlebot-News?
Our take
Don't. Blocking Googlebot-News removes you from Google altogether — the ordinary results and the AI answers built on top of them. If what you actually want is to stay in search while staying out of model training, that is a separate token, and it's the one to reach for. MetaPilot shows Googlebot-News in your crawler analytics but won't write a block for it from the dashboard.
The robots.txt rules for Googlebot-News
Add the rule below to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain
(yourdomain.com/robots.txt). Use the Googlebot-News token rather than the raw
User-Agent string, and repeat the rule on every subdomain you want covered.
New to the file? Read what robots.txt is first.
The allow rule is the one you want. The disallow variant is documented below for completeness, but it removes your site from Google entirely. Don't paste it unless that is genuinely what you intend.
Allow Googlebot-News explicitly
User-agent: Googlebot-News Allow: /
Block Googlebot-News — removes you from Google
User-agent: Googlebot-News Disallow: /
A note on what this does and doesn't do. robots.txt is a request, not a lock —
it works because well-behaved crawlers choose to read it. It also isn't retroactive: anything already
fetched stays fetched. If you need a hard stop, block at your firewall or CDN as well.
How MetaPilot handles Googlebot-News
MetaPilot detects Googlebot-News in your edge logs, so you see its real hits on your
real pages rather than a guess: how often it visits, which URLs it takes, and how that trend moves week to
week. From the same screen you flip Googlebot-News between allow and deny with one click —
MetaPilot rewrites only its own managed section of your
robots.txt and serves it at the edge, so the change is live on the crawler's next visit with
no deploy and no touching your own rules.
See AI-crawler analytics or follow the guide to
monitor and control AI crawlers.
Related crawlers
Google-InspectionTool
The fetcher behind your own Search Console testing tools — URL Inspection and the Rich Results Test.
Googlebot
Google's main search crawler — and, indirectly, the crawler behind AI Overviews, because those are generated from the index it builds.
Googlebot-Image
Googlebot's image-fetching counterpart, which populates Google Images.
Googlebot-Video
Googlebot's video-fetching counterpart, which populates Google's video results.
FAQ
What is Googlebot-News?
A robots.txt token for Google News, not a separate crawler — the fetching is done by Googlebot.
Google-News lets a publisher control inclusion in Google News independently of ordinary search. Google documents that it has no user agent of its own: crawling happens under the Googlebot user agent, and this token only governs what Google News may do with the result.
Does Googlebot-News respect robots.txt?
Yes — Google documents that Googlebot-News honours robots.txt. A Disallow for the Googlebot-News token is respected.
Because this is a control token rather than a crawler, it will never appear as a hit in your logs. MetaPilot shows it as "policy only" for exactly that reason.
Should I block Googlebot-News?
Almost certainly not. Disallowing Googlebot-News removes you from Google's search results, and because those same results feed Google's AI answers, you lose both at once.
If you want to stay in search but out of generative AI, that is a different token — see the training opt-out for Google in the related crawlers below. MetaPilot will not write a block for Googlebot-News from the dashboard for this reason.
Will blocking Googlebot-News hurt my traffic?
Disallowing it removes you from Google News while leaving ordinary Search inclusion intact. Only relevant if you publish news.
Ask an AI whether to block Googlebot-News