What is Google-Safety?
Google-Safety is a specialized security crawler that performs abuse-specific scanning to detect malware and other security threats on publicly posted links across Google properties, operating independently of robots.txt restrictions. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when Google-Safety visits your website.
Category
| Example User Agent | Google-Safety |
| Operated By | |
| Source | Official Website |
| Identity |
Verified
Verified Identification
Requests claiming to be this agent can be authenticated using its published verification method. |
| Triggered By | Scheduled or requested scan |
| Used for AI Model Training | Not expected |
| Affects AI Chat & Search Visibility | Not directly |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
Why Is Google-Safety Visiting My Website?
Google-Safety is scanning your site for vulnerabilities, either as part of an internet-wide sweep or because someone requested an assessment of your domain. Recurring visits often indicate that a monitoring service has added your site to its checks.
Should I Block Google-Safety?
Usually not, unless you already run your own security scans and want cleaner logs. Google-Safety checks for exposed vulnerabilities, and some services report their findings to site owners at no cost. For context, 6% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for Google-Safety.
How Do I Block Google-Safety Using Robots.txt?
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block Google-Safety from accessing your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all security scanners at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: Google-Safety # https://knownagents.com/agents/google-safety
Disallow: /Insights for Google-Safety
As of October 29, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Compliance
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Frequently Asked Questions
What Traffic Patterns Should I Expect From Google-Safety?
Google-Safety's cadence depends on how the scan is configured. Continuous monitoring may run daily or hourly, while a one-time or internet-wide scan may sweep once and disappear.
Does Google-Safety Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Google-Safety is expected to follow robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the appropriate first step if you want to block it. Automatic Robots.txt can add and maintain that rule, while Agent Analytics lets you verify whether Google-Safety respects it.
Is Google-Safety Used for AI Model Training?
Not ordinarily. Google-Safety is not categorized as an AI training scraper or data provider, so AI model training is not its expected purpose.
Does Blocking Google-Safety Affect AI Search or Citations?
Not directly. Google-Safety's expected purpose is not to supply an AI search index or retrieve pages for AI-generated answers.
Does Google-Safety Access Private Content?
It deliberately looks for exposed private content. Google-Safety tests login pages, admin panels, and API endpoints for vulnerabilities. Probing does not mean it gained access, but you should expect requests to sensitive paths in your logs.
How Can I Verify a Request From Google-Safety?
Agent Analytics tracks visits from Google-Safety and every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper, then authenticates each visit using Google-Safety's published verification method. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "Google-Safety". Look for bursts of requests to uncommon paths that ordinary visitors rarely access. A matching log entry alone is not proof because any bot can claim to be Google-Safety.
How Is Google-Safety Different From Other Google Agents?
Google operates separate agents for different purposes, so each agent should be evaluated and controlled independently.
- Google-Agent: Google-Agent is used by agents hosted on Google infrastructure to navigate the web and perform actions upon user request.
- GoogleAgent-Mariner: GoogleAgent-Mariner is an AI agent created by Google that can use a web browser. It can intelligently navigate and interact with websites to complete multi-step tasks on …
- Gemini-Deep-Research: Gemini-Deep-Research is the agent responsible for collecting and scanning resources used in Google Gemini's Deep Research feature, which acts as a personal research assis…
- Google-NotebookLM: Google-NotebookLM is an AI-powered research and note-taking assistant that helps users synthesize information from uploaded sources like documents, transcripts, or web co…
- GoogleAgent-URLContext: GoogleAgent-URLContext is a web fetcher operated by Google that retrieves web content on behalf of Gemini API users. When a developer provides a URL as context in a Gemin…