Aug 16, 2026
Google
DOCUMENTATION CHANGE
Google Adds Vertex AI Agent Crawler
Google Search documentation lists Google-CloudVertexBot as a crawler used when site owners build Vertex AI Agents.
The News
Google’s Search documentation updates list Google-CloudVertexBot as a new Google crawler. The crawler is described as accessing sites at the site owner’s request when building Vertex AI Agents.
The OPTYX Analysis
This separates enterprise agent retrieval from classic Google Search crawling. It gives publishers and security teams another crawler identity to classify, monitor, and decide whether to allow in retrieval workflows.
Enterprise AI Impact
Robots, WAF, and bot-management policies should account for Google-CloudVertexBot separately from Googlebot. Blocking it may affect internal or customer-facing Vertex AI Agent builds that depend on web retrieval.