Based on what buyers actually ask
Auto-generated tagsFeatureAI-powered
Googlebot and Google-Extended
Googlebot, Google-Extended and how Google's AI reads your site
Google does not run a separate crawler for AI Overviews. Googlebot does the fetching, and Google-Extended is a robots.txt control over how that content is used for Gemini. WriteWorks tracks Googlebot's crawl of your pages next to every other AI crawler, so Google's activity sits in the same picture.
7-day trial · Cancel anytime
Google Search Console
Google Analytics 4
Google Ads
Ahrefs
Semrush
DataForSEO
Firecrawl
Tavily
Exa
Parallel
G2
WordPress
Webflow
Contentful
Sanity
Payload
BaseHub
Framer
Notion
Gamma
v0
Slack
Linear
Atlassian
Monday.com
Granola
Klaviyo
Customer.io
OpenAI Ads
Claude and MCP clients The challenge
Why Google's AI crawling confuses teams
One crawler, one control token, several AI surfaces.
Google-Extended is widely misunderstood
Many teams expect to see a Google-Extended crawler in their logs. It is a robots.txt product token, not a separate bot: Google's existing crawlers fetch the page, and the token controls whether that content may be used for Gemini models and grounding.
Blocking Googlebot to avoid AI Overviews backfires
AI Overviews are built on Google Search's index, which Googlebot crawls. Blocking Googlebot removes you from search results as well as the overview.
Google crawl data lives apart from AI crawler data
Search Console reports Googlebot's crawl in its own interface, while GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot sit in raw logs. Comparing Google with the other engines means stitching sources together.
Pages are built for links, not answers
Content written to rank in blue links rarely carries the structure an assistant needs to quote it directly.
The solution
How WriteWorks handles Google's crawlers
Report what arrives, classify it, compare it.
WriteWorks identifies Googlebot requests from your server or CDN logs, resolves them to Google and classifies them as AI Indexing, so Google's crawl is compared directly with OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity and the rest.
Google-Extended is in the WriteWorks registry, classified as AI Training, so any request identifying itself that way is labelled. In practice its effect is set in robots.txt rather than seen as separate traffic, and WriteWorks reports what actually arrives.
Bot signals map Google crawler activity to Gemini and list pages crawled in the last 7 days that Gemini has not cited yet, alongside the same check for the other engines.
Customer story
How teams are winning AI search
From invisibility to category dominance across every major answer engine.
“Before WriteWorks, our content landed and disappeared. Now every asset ships citation-ready, gets cited across the engines our buyers ask, and ties back to the loop. It's the first time we've measured AI search as a real channel.”
EM
Capabilities
Google crawler capabilities
Google's crawl alongside every AI engine's.
Googlebot visit trend
Daily Googlebot requests with period comparison.
Google vs other AI crawlers
Google's share of crawl activity next to 14 other platforms.
Per-page Googlebot activity
Which URLs Googlebot fetches and when it last came back.
Live Googlebot log
Raw request stream with path filter and CSV export.
Request re-indexing
Ping IndexNow for a changed page from the page analytics view.
Time savings
What changes
Google and AI crawlers in one view.
TaskBeforeWith WriteWorksTime saved
Compare Google's crawl with AI crawlersSearch Console plus raw logsOne dashboard, 15 platformsNo stitching
Check Googlebot reaches a new pageWait and inspectPer-page last-visit timeFaster answer
Included
What's included
The Google view inside AI crawler intelligence.
Googlebot identified and resolved to Google
Google-Extended in the crawler registry
Google compared with 14 other crawler platforms
Per-page crawl activity and last-visit time
Live crawler log with CSV export
Crawled-but-not-cited watch list including Gemini
Built for
Who uses it
Teams working on Google's AI surfaces.
Technical SEO
Read Google's crawl in the same view as every AI engine's.
Teams targeting AI Overviews and Gemini
Keep the crawl side of Google's AI surfaces in sight.
Publishers setting AI policy
Understand what Google-Extended does and does not control before changing robots.txt.
Featured story
Fhresh
“WriteWorks turned AI search from a black box into our most measurable channel. We can show the board how we're cited, our share of voice, and how sentiment is trending, across every engine.”
Read the full story20+
Markets tracked
Sentiment
Scored on every mention
Board-ready
AI-visibility reporting
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Everything teams typically ask before getting started.
What is Google-Extended?+
Google-Extended is a robots.txt product token. Disallowing it tells Google not to use your content for Gemini models and grounding. It does not have its own crawler: Google's existing crawlers fetch the pages, so you will rarely see Google-Extended as a user agent in your logs.
Does blocking Google-Extended remove me from AI Overviews?+
No. Google states Google-Extended does not affect inclusion in Google Search, and AI Overviews are part of Search. To leave AI Overviews you would have to restrict Googlebot itself, which also affects your search rankings.
What is Googlebot's role in AI search?+
Googlebot crawls the pages that Google Search indexes, and AI Overviews and AI Mode draw on that index. That is why WriteWorks classifies Googlebot under AI Indexing and shows it next to the dedicated AI crawlers.
Can WriteWorks block Googlebot or Google-Extended?+
No. Access rules belong in your robots.txt or CDN. WriteWorks shows how often Google's crawlers visit and which pages they read, so your decisions are based on real activity.
Which plans include Googlebot tracking?+
AI crawler analytics is on the Growth and Enterprise plans and on agency plans, not on Starter.
Explore more
Keep exploring
Related solutions, adjacent use cases, and platform features.
Put Google's crawl in the same picture
Track Googlebot next to GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot, and check Google's crawl against Gemini citations.