Google-NotebookLM
Google-NotebookLM is blocked by 278 sites in the October 2026 survey, or 4.5% of readable files. Its operator is unclear in the community reference.
Who runs Google-NotebookLM?
| Fact | Google-NotebookLM reference entry |
|---|---|
| Operator | “Unclear at this time.” |
| Purpose | “AI Assistants” |
| Does Google-NotebookLM obey robots.txt? | “Unclear at this time.” |
| Frequency | “Unclear at this time.” |
| Cloudflare managed list for Google-NotebookLM | No |
These facts quote the stored community ai.robots.txt reference.
“Google-NotebookLM is an AI-powered research and note-taking assistant that helps users synthesize information from uploaded sources like documents, transcripts, or web co…”
The stated role here is an AI assistant. An owner may want search visitors and answers that link back to a page while keeping its text out of model-training datasets.
How many sites block it?
Our readable sample has 278 whole-site blocks, 4.5% of 6,171 files, with Disallow: / as the instruction. Of that full sample, 79 name this crawler, or 1.3%. The count without a whole-site block is 5,893.
For the top 1,000 ranks, its name appears in 25 files out of 552, or 4.5%. Whole-site blocks total 57. Blocking is more common among the leading sites, at 10.3%. Lower in the ranking, blocking reaches 221 files out of 5,619, a 3.9% share.
| Readable files | Named by | Named share | Blocked by | Blocked share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google-NotebookLM, all ranks | 79 | 1.3% | 278 | 4.5% |
| Google-NotebookLM, top 1,000 | 25 | 4.5% | 57 | 10.3% |
| Google-NotebookLM, remaining ranks | 54 | 1.0% | 221 | 3.9% |
These totals cover both groups naming it and rules that apply to every crawler. Of 278 blocks, 219 come only from that general rule, without naming this crawler. The naming total includes 59 files with a ban on every path and 20 files without that ban. Elsewhere, 6,092 files do not name it. We ignore capitalization and repeated names.
Has that changed since August?
Between August and October, 15 sites that had blocked it stopped and 18 started, so 3 more of the same 5,889 sites block it. A further 231 blocked it in both months, and 5,625 did so in neither. Keeping the sites the same lets us count changes in their rules.
August’s full sample had 266 blocks among 6,236 readable files. October’s was 278 among 6,171. Those monthly totals also reflect which files we could read on each visit.
| August to October | Files |
|---|---|
| Started blocking | 18 |
| Stopped blocking | 15 |
| Blocked in both | 231 |
| Blocked in neither | 5,625 |
| Net change | +3 |
How to block or allow it
Place the group in your root robots.txt file. Per the robots.txt standard, a named group for Google-NotebookLM overrides User-agent: *.
Block the whole site
User-agent: Google-NotebookLM
Disallow: /Allow access
User-agent: Google-NotebookLM
Allow: /It's the 75th most-named crawler of the 171 we counted in the crawler index.
How we counted
For Google-NotebookLM, on 19 October 2026, we requested robots.txt from Tranco’s top 10,000 sites. Requests could run for 8 seconds, with a 262,144-byte file limit. Missing, unreachable and oversized files do not contribute to these shares. Repeat readings are included, using scripts/robots_2026_08_06.py (robots.py at app commit 07104ff). See the full survey method.
Common questions
Does a User-agent line mean it is blocked?
A name identifies the crawler addressed by a group. The survey found 20 files with that name and no recorded whole-site ban, out of 79.
What do the top-ranked sites show?
Its name appears in 4.5% of readable leading files and 1.3% overall. Blocking affects 10.3% in the leading group and 4.5% in all ranks.
Which nearby entry can I compare?
The nearby Panscient entry reports 77 files that name it and 75 whole-site blocks, 1.2% of readable files. Here, 79 files mention the name and 278 block access, or 4.5%.