Google introduced Google-Extended so site owners could separate two decisions: appearing in traditional Google Search versus contributing content to Google's generative AI models. Adding a disallow rule for the Google-Extended token blocks the AI training and grounding use without harming your standard search rankings, since Googlebot handles indexing independently.
Because it is a policy token rather than a distinct bot fetching pages, Google-Extended affects usage rights, not crawl behavior. Acromatico advises clients on this trade-off: opting out protects content but can reduce presence in Google's AI Overviews and Gemini answers, where brand visibility increasingly happens.
Related terms
Questions people ask
No. Google-Extended only governs whether your content feeds Google's generative AI training and grounding. Traditional Search indexing is handled by Googlebot separately, so disallowing Google-Extended keeps your normal rankings intact while opting out of AI model use of your pages.
Not exactly. Google-Extended is a robots.txt access token that signals a usage preference rather than a distinct bot that fetches pages. It tells Google whether your content may be used to develop and ground generative AI products like Gemini and AI-driven search features.
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