In short. GoogleOther-Video fetches publicly accessible video URLs and follows robots.txt rules addressed to GoogleOther-Video or GoogleOther.

Definition: As of October 2026, Google documents GoogleOther-Video as a version of its GoogleOther crawler optimized for fetching publicly accessible video URLs. Its crawling preferences affect no specific Google product.

Key facts

Google's common crawlers documentation lists GoogleOther-Video/1.0 as the HTTP user-agent string and accepts GoogleOther-Video or GoogleOther as robots.txt tokens.
Google's robots.txt specification limits a file's rules to the host, protocol and port where that file resides. A video on another host falls under that host's rules.
Google's request verification documentation provides reverse and forward DNS checks and published IP ranges for identifying crawler traffic.

What does GoogleOther-Video collect?

Google's crawler list describes the parent GoogleOther crawler as a tool that various product teams may use to fetch publicly accessible content. One example is a one-off crawl for internal research and development. GoogleOther-Video specializes that crawler for video URLs.

The same documentation assigns no specific product effect to GoogleOther-Video crawling preferences. It separately lists Googlebot-Video, whose preferences affect video-related Google Search features and other products dependent on videos. The documented scope therefore gives website operators distinct crawler identities for GoogleOther video collection and video-related Search crawling.

How can a website control collection?

A robots.txt file is a text file containing rules about which crawlers may access particular site paths. Google's common crawler documentation states that these crawlers always obey robots.txt rules when crawling automatically. It lists both GoogleOther-Video and GoogleOther as matching tokens for GoogleOther-Video.

The following group applies a crawl prohibition to every path for this crawler, using Google's documented token and rule syntax:

User-agent: GoogleOther-Video
Disallow: /

Google's robots.txt specification requires the file in the site's top-level directory. The rule belongs on the host serving the video URL; a file on the website's main host covers only that host, protocol and port.

The specification selects the group with the most specific matching user agent. A dedicated GoogleOther-Video group therefore takes precedence over a broader GoogleOther group. Specific user-agent groups and the global * group are evaluated separately, so reviewing the selected group matters when changing existing restrictions.

How can a request be verified?

An HTTP user-agent string is the crawler name sent in a request header. Google's common crawler list warns that this string can be spoofed.

Google's verification procedure starts with a reverse DNS lookup of the requesting IP address. For common crawlers, the documented hostname patterns use googlebot.com or geo.googlebot.com. A forward lookup must resolve back to the original IP address. Automated checks can instead compare the request address with Google's published common crawler IP ranges.

FAQ

Can I target video collection separately from GoogleOther?

Yes. You can use the GoogleOther-Video token listed in Google's crawler documentation to address that crawler specifically. The broader GoogleOther token also matches it.

Where should I put the rule if my videos use another host?

You need the rule in the robots.txt file on the host serving the video URLs. Google's robots.txt specification applies each file only to its own host, protocol and port.

Sources

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