Google-Agent vs Googlebot: Google Defines the Technical Boundary Between User Triggered AI Access and Search Crawling Systems Today

Google-Agent appears in server logs as a distinct technical entity.

Google-Agent is used by Google AI products to fetch web content in response to a direct user prompt.

Unlike Googlebot and other autonomous crawlers that discover and index pages on an algorithmic schedule, Google-Agent acts as a user proxy retrieving specific URLs as requested and does not crawl by following links to discover content.

Google-Agent ignores robots.txt directives.

Google-Agent identifies its traffic with specific User-Agent strings.