GoogleOther

GoogleOther is the generic fetcher Google product teams share for public content that is not Search.^[1] Google documents that crawling preferences addressed to it do not affect any one product,^[2] which is the reason it exists: it keeps one-off internal fetches off the Googlebot token, where they would look like Search crawling and be read as a ranking signal.

The HTTP user agent carries the token in a browser-shaped string.^[3] It shares infrastructure with the rest of Google crawling, so verification is the same as for Googlebot: a reverse lookup against the published Google crawler ranges, never the name alone.

Disallowing GoogleOther does not affect Search crawling or ranking, because Search uses the Googlebot token. What it removes is the research and product fetching that sits behind Google features outside Search, which is a smaller and much less legible loss than blocking Googlebot.

Operator documentation: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/overview-google-crawlers

Published IP list: https://developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/special-crawlers.json

A user agent is a claim, not a proof: any client can send any name. Where an operator publishes IP ranges, a reverse lookup is the only way to tell a real visit from an impersonation.