Google Clarifies Gemini & Vertex AI User Agent Rules No Impact on Rankings

New Update: Google-Extended Controls AI Training, Not Search Rankings

Google has just updated its Google-Extended user agent documentation — a move that’s catching the attention of publishers, SEOs, and digital marketers alike. The key takeaway? While you can control whether Google uses your site’s data for Gemini and Vertex AI training, this setting does not impact your Google Search rankings or inclusion.

Let’s break it down.

🔍 What’s Google-Extended?

Google-Extended is a special user agent (or product token) that web publishers can use to decide whether their website’s content can be used:
✅ For training future versions of Google Gemini models.
✅ For grounding (feeding content at prompt time) to improve Gemini AI’s factuality and relevance.

Until now, many publishers were unclear about whether opting in or out of Google-Extended might affect their Google Search performance — an important clarification for anyone focused on SEO.

✏ What’s Changed in the Documentation?

Previously, Google’s explanation was vague, simply stating:

“Google-Extended does not impact a site’s inclusion or ranking in Google Search.”

The updated guidance spells it out more clearly:

“Google-Extended does not impact a site’s inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal in Google Search.”

In short: Google-Extended settings only affect how your content is used for AI — not how it appears or ranks in Google Search results.

🤖 Why Does This Matter?

Many site owners worry about AI training impacting their traffic. With grounding, Google’s AI pulls live data (such as from web pages) to improve the accuracy of its AI-generated answers. But if you block Google-Extended, you’re simply telling Google not to use your content for these Gemini/Vertex AI systems.

👉 Important: This has zero effect on how Google crawls, indexes, or ranks your pages in search.

📚 Other Key Google-Extended Clarifications

Google has aligned its updated documentation with other key resources across Google Search Central:
✅ Google-Extended ≠ Search control: Use robots.txt or other established tools to manage how your site appears in Google Search.
✅ Blocking Gemini doesn’t block search crawling: Stopping AI training access doesn’t affect search engine crawling or ranking.
✅ AI grounding & training separation: Google separates the systems that train and feed Gemini from those that power search rankings.

This ensures publishers retain control over AI use without fear of impacting organic search traffic.

🚨 Why SEOs and Publishers Should Care

For SEO agencies, digital marketers, and web publishers, this clarification helps guide content strategy decisions:

• Want to protect proprietary content from being used for AI grounding? You can safely block Google-Extended without hurting SEO.
• Focused solely on search performance? Google-Extended settings are irrelevant to your search rankings.

This update eliminates confusion and helps publishers set clearer boundaries between AI data use and search optimization.

✅ Main Takeaways

💡 Pro Tips for Webmasters & SEOs

• Regularly audit your robots.txt and Google-Extended settings to ensure they align with your business goals.
• If you don’t want your data feeding AI models, use Google-Extended, but remember this won’t hide your pages from search results.
• Keep an eye on future AI policy updates — as generative models evolve, more controls may emerge.

🚀 Final Thoughts

Google’s update brings welcome clarity in an era where the lines between AI models and search engines are increasingly blurred. For publishers, the key message is simple:
👉 Controlling AI access ≠ controlling search rankings.

You can confidently adjust your Google-Extended settings without worrying about losing your hard-earned SEO traffic.

Stay informed, stay adaptive, and keep optimizing!