Safe Google Bots

FeedFetcher-Google

Operated by Google

Quick Facts

User-Agent:
FeedFetcher-Google
Category:
Google Bots
Operator:
Google
Safety:
Safe
Blocking Impact:
Medium - Affects a specific feature, not rankings
SEO Impact Score:
6/10
Official docs:
developers.google.com

What is FeedFetcher-Google?

FeedFetcher-Google retrieves RSS and Atom feeds on behalf of Google services that subscribe to them, such as Google News and PubSubHubbub delivery.

FeedFetcher-Google retrieves RSS and Atom feeds on behalf of Google services that subscribe to them, such as Google News and PubSubHubbub delivery. FeedFetcher-Google identifies itself with the user-agent token FeedFetcher-Google. You can control it with a User-agent: FeedFetcher-Google group in robots.txt. Robots.txt is voluntary, so for hard enforcement combine it with server-level blocking.

What happens if you block FeedFetcher-Google?

⚠️ Blocking FeedFetcher-Google does not affect how your pages rank in Google Search, because it is not the indexing crawler. What it does stop is feed delivery: Google products that subscribe to your RSS or Atom feed will no longer receive updates, so feed-driven surfaces go stale. If you do not publish a feed, blocking it changes nothing at all.
Allow it if you publish a feed that Google products consume.

How to control FeedFetcher-Google with robots.txt

<code>User-agent: FeedFetcher-Google</code> - Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately.

Block completely (robots.txt)
User-agent: FeedFetcher-Google Disallow: /
Allow all (robots.txt)
User-agent: FeedFetcher-Google Allow: /
Block private only (robots.txt)
User-agent: FeedFetcher-Google Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /api/ Disallow: /admin/ Allow: /
Nginx server block
# Nginx: Block FeedFetcher-Google if ($http_user_agent ~* "FeedFetcher-Google") { return 403 "Bot blocked"; }
Apache .htaccess
# Apache: Block FeedFetcher-Google SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "FeedFetcher-Google" bad_bot Order Allow,Deny Allow from all Deny from env=bad_bot
Meta robots tag
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">
X-Robots-Tag header
X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow

Is FeedFetcher-Google safe to allow?

Yes, FeedFetcher-Google is a **safe and legitimate** crawler. It is operated by Google and documented publicly, and it identifies itself honestly with the token FeedFetcher-Google. Allow it if you publish a feed that Google products consume.
Verify by reverse-DNS: genuine Google fetchers resolve to googlebot.com, google.com or googleusercontent.com. Confirm the forward lookup matches the original IP.

What does FeedFetcher-Google do?

Understanding what FeedFetcher-Google is for helps you decide whether to allow or block it.

  • Retrieves RSS and Atom feed documents
  • Serves Google products that subscribe to feeds
  • Refetches feeds when publishers push updates
  • Does not perform general page crawling
  • Respects robots.txt directives

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the user-agent string for FeedFetcher-Google?
FeedFetcher-Google uses the token FeedFetcher-Google. Match it case-insensitively in robots.txt and in any server-level rule.
Is FeedFetcher-Google safe?
Yes. FeedFetcher-Google is operated by Google and is documented publicly. FeedFetcher-Google retrieves RSS and Atom feeds on behalf of Google services that subscribe to them, such as Google News and PubSubHubbub delivery.
Will blocking FeedFetcher-Google hurt my SEO?
Blocking FeedFetcher-Google does not affect how your pages rank in Google Search, because it is not the indexing crawler. What it does stop is feed delivery: Google products that subscribe to your RSS or Atom feed will no longer receive updates, so feed-driven surfaces go stale. If you do not publish a feed, blocking it changes nothing at all.
How do I block FeedFetcher-Google in robots.txt?
Add these lines to /robots.txt: 
User-agent: FeedFetcher-Google
Disallow: /
To restrict only part of your site, disallow specific paths and allow the rest.

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