What is GoogleOther-Video? AI crawler guide

GoogleOther-Video by Google: Google product-specific video crawler token for public content fetches. Check its reported user-agent, robots.txt behavior, source, and verification guidance.

Google product-specific video crawler token for public content fetches.

What is GoogleOther-Video?

GoogleOther-Video is a Google crawler token used for fetching publicly accessible video content on behalf of various Google products. It operates separately from the main Googlebot, allowing site owners to manage video-specific crawling without affecting standard search indexing. The crawler honors robots.txt directives and identifies itself with the user-agent token GoogleOther-Video. Its purpose is to support product-specific video fetches, such as those for Google's video-related services, while providing a distinct control point for webmasters.

What it's for

For site owners, GoogleOther-Video means that Google may use this dedicated crawler to access video content for its products. Blocking it can restrict video-oriented crawls without impacting regular Googlebot activity, giving you finer control over how your video assets are accessed and used across Google's ecosystem.

GoogleOther-Video access decides whether Google can fetch your pages. Whether those pages get used in generated answers is a separate question, so track your presence in Google's AI results rather than treating crawl volume as visibility.

How to handle GoogleOther-Video

To manage GoogleOther-Video, add a directive in your robots.txt file targeting the user-agent token GoogleOther-Video. Since it honors robots.txt, you can disallow specific paths or your entire site to prevent it from crawling your video content. This approach isolates video-related crawling from other Google crawlers.

robots.txt rule

User-agent: GoogleOther-Video Disallow: /

Blocking cost

Blocking GoogleOther-Video may prevent your video content from being used in Google's video-related products, potentially reducing visibility in those services.

Examples

A video hosting site uses robots.txt to disallow GoogleOther-Video from crawling its private video library, while still allowing Googlebot to index its public pages.
A news website allows GoogleOther-Video to crawl its video news clips, enabling their inclusion in Google's video search features without affecting article indexing.
An educational platform blocks GoogleOther-Video on its premium video courses to keep them out of Google's video products, while permitting other Google crawlers for site discovery.

Related bots

GoogleOther-Image: Another Google general crawler to compare.
GoogleOther: Another Google general crawler to compare.
Google-Firebase: Another Google general crawler to compare.
Google-CloudVertexBot: Another Google general crawler to compare.
Amazonbot: Also tracked as a general crawler.
ImagesiftBot: Also tracked as a general crawler.
FirecrawlAgent: Also tracked as a general crawler.
Brightbot: Also tracked as a general crawler.
ApifyBot: Also tracked as a general crawler.
Gemini 2.0: GoogleOther-Video gives crawler context for Gemini 2.0.
Gemini: GoogleOther-Video gives crawler context for Gemini.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between GoogleOther-Video and Googlebot?

GoogleOther-Video is a specialized crawler for video content used by various Google products, while Googlebot is the main crawler for Google Search indexing. They are controlled separately in robots.txt, so blocking one does not affect the other.

Does GoogleOther-Video obey robots.txt?

Yes, GoogleOther-Video honors robots.txt directives. You can use the user-agent token GoogleOther-Video to allow or disallow its access to your site.

What happens if I block GoogleOther-Video?

Blocking GoogleOther-Video may prevent your video content from being crawled and used in Google's video-related products, but it will not impact regular Googlebot crawling for search indexing.

Can I allow GoogleOther-Video but block other Google crawlers?

Yes, because GoogleOther-Video uses a distinct user-agent token, you can set specific rules for it in robots.txt independently of other Google crawlers like Googlebot.

What kind of content does GoogleOther-Video crawl?

GoogleOther-Video is designed to fetch publicly accessible video content for use in Google's video-related products. It does not crawl non-video content unless configured to do so by those products.

Data & Sources

Google documentation - Primary source for GoogleOther-Video crawler details.