What Google Read Aloud does
Google Read Aloud fetches web pages so they can be read out with text-to-speech (TTS). It powers Google Go, Read Aloud on the Google app, and other Google text-to-speech services, and it activates when an end user with TTS enabled visits a page. It is not a web crawler: it does not follow links, uses stateless rendering to view the page like a user would, and does not use the user's cookies. An older agent name, google-speakr, is deprecated.
How to control Google Read Aloud
Target Google Read Aloud in your robots.txt with the Google-Read-Aloud token. Rules apply per bot, so you can allow this one while blocking others, or the reverse.
Allow Google Read Aloud
User-agent: Google-Read-Aloud
Allow: /Block Google Read Aloud
User-agent: Google-Read-Aloud
Disallow: /Because Google Read Aloud requests are initiated by a user rather than by an automated crawl, robots.txt cannot be used to opt out; sites disable it with the nopagereadaloud meta tag instead.
How to identify Google Read Aloud
Temso identifies Google Read Aloudtraffic by matching the request's User-Agent header against this pattern. User-agent strings can be spoofed, so treat a match as an indication, not proof.
Google-Read-AloudGoogle Read Aloud FAQ
What is Google Read Aloud?
Google Read Aloud is a Google user agent that fetches web pages to read them out with text-to-speech when a user with TTS enabled visits a page. It serves Google Go, Read Aloud on the Google app, and other Google text-to-speech services, and it does not crawl links on its own.
How do I block Google Read Aloud?
Robots.txt rules for the Google-Read-Aloud user agent do not work, because its fetches are user-initiated rather than an automated crawl. To disable it, add the meta tag <meta name="google" content="nopagereadaloud"> to a page; for paywalled content, Google recommends structured data for subscription content with isAccessibleForFree set to False.
About Operational Bots
Monitoring, security scanning, link previews, webhooks, and feed fetchers: the utility traffic that keeps integrations and shared links working.
Most of this traffic is service-critical or user-triggered. Webhooks and previews don't follow robots.txt, and blocking them tends to break things you rely on.
