Allow or block Google-Extended on Nginx: robots.txt and a map on the user agent

Add a “User-agent: Google-Extended” group with “Disallow: /” to robots.txt in the site’s root. No request carries the name Google-Extended, so a rule on the user agent never matches it. robots.txt is the only place this name has any effect.

This response

You are ClaudeBot (Anthropic). Citable recognised you as an AI agent, so this is https://getcitable.in/crawlers/google-extended/nginx with the UI removed — the content only. A browser asking for the same address gets the full designed page.

Google-Extended, and where Nginx keeps the rule

Google-Extended is not a crawler. It sends no requests of its own: Google reads pages with its existing crawlers, and Google-Extended is the name robots.txt uses to say whether those pages may be used to train Gemini models.

Nginx serves robots.txt as a file from the site’s root, like any other file. The server itself can also refuse a request by its user agent.

Step by step

What to paste

A group that names a crawler replaces the * group for that crawler; it does not add to it. Paths the * group closes are open to a crawler with its own group unless they are repeated there.

robots.txt, refusing Google-Extended:

User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /

robots.txt, allowing Google-Extended:

User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

What trips people up

A file needs no reload, but a CDN in front of the server may keep serving the old robots.txt until its cache expires.

Asked, or actually refused?

No request carries the name Google-Extended, so a rule on the user agent never matches it. robots.txt is the only place this name has any effect.

Check it yourself

Read the file a crawler is given and look for the group that names Google-Extended. There is no request to test: Google-Extended never sends one.

The request:

curl -s https://your-site.example/robots.txt

Questions

How do I block Google-Extended on Nginx?

Add a “User-agent: Google-Extended” group with “Disallow: /” to robots.txt in the site’s root. No request carries the name Google-Extended, so a rule on the user agent never matches it. robots.txt is the only place this name has any effect.

How do I allow Google-Extended on Nginx?

A crawler that robots.txt does not name follows the * group, so Google-Extended needs no rule to be allowed. To allow it by name, add the Allow block.

Can Nginx actually stop Google-Extended, or only ask it?

No request carries the name Google-Extended, so a rule on the user agent never matches it. robots.txt is the only place this name has any effect.

Does a rule for Google-Extended affect Googlebot or my Google rankings?

Refusing Google-Extended tells Google not to use your pages to train Gemini models. It does not change whether Googlebot reads them, and Google says it is not used as a ranking signal and does not affect inclusion in Google Search.

Checked against Nginx's own documentation on 1 October 2026

Related

About Citable

Citable strips the UI from a website for AI agents and serves them only the content.

When an AI agent — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or any of the 81 that Citable recognises — opens a page, Citable removes the theme, scripts, navigation and layout and serves only the content: the same facts, at the same URL, on the site's own domain. People and Google still get the full designed page.

How it works: https://getcitable.in/how-it-works · Summary for AI agents: https://getcitable.in/llms.txt


Source: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/google-extended/nginx · Citable · Run the free audit · llms.txt · getcitable@gmail.com