What Googlebot-Video does
Googlebot-Video is one of Google's common crawlers and fetches video content with the user agent string "Googlebot-Video/1.0". Crawling preferences addressed to it affect video-related Google Search features and other Google products that depend on videos. In robots.txt it responds to the token Googlebot-Video, and when no Googlebot-Video group exists it follows your general Googlebot rules instead.
How to control Googlebot-Video
Target Googlebot-Video in your robots.txt with the Googlebot-Video token. Rules apply per bot, so you can allow this one while blocking others, or the reverse.
Allow Googlebot-Video
User-agent: Googlebot-Video
Allow: /Block Googlebot-Video
User-agent: Googlebot-Video
Disallow: /If robots.txt has no group for the Googlebot-Video token, the crawler falls back to your general Googlebot directives.
How to identify Googlebot-Video
Temso identifies Googlebot-Videotraffic 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.
Googlebot-VideoGooglebot-Video FAQ
What is Googlebot-Video?
Googlebot-Video is Google's video crawler, requesting files as "Googlebot-Video/1.0". It crawls video content for video-related features in Google Search and other Google products that depend on videos.
How do I block Googlebot-Video?
Add a robots.txt group with "User-agent: Googlebot-Video" followed by "Disallow: /" (or specific paths). If no Googlebot-Video group exists, the crawler obeys your general Googlebot rules, so a site-wide Googlebot block also covers it.
About Search Engine Crawlers
Classic search indexers that now also feed AI features: Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode build on Googlebot's index, and Microsoft Copilot builds on Bingbot's.
Blocking these removes you from both traditional rankings and the AI answers built on top of those indexes, usually the most costly block of all.
