Google Extended: What It Is and Why It Matters

Google Extended is a product token that webmasters can use to manage whether their sites help improve Gemini Apps and Vertex AI generative APIs, which are Google’s products that use AI to create content such as text, images, audio, and video. A website administrator can decide whether to support these AI models in their eventual development of more accuracy and capability by utilizing Google Extended to manage content access on their website.

Google Extended is not a separate crawler, but rather a part of Googlebot, which is Google’s main crawler used for Google Search. Googlebot uses different user agents to identify itself when crawling different types of content, such as Googlebot Smartphone, Googlebot Desktop, Googlebot Image, Googlebot News, and Googlebot Video. Google Extended is another user agent that Googlebot may use when crawling content for AI purposes.

How to Use Google Extended

You can choose whether or not to allow Google Extended to utilize your material for AI model training in a straightforward and adaptable manner. The Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) allows you to designate which areas of your website you want Google Extended to be able to visit or not. To prevent Google Extended from crawling your entire website, for instance, you can use the following syntax in your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Google-Extended Disallow: /

Or, you can use the following syntax to block Google Extended from crawling a specific directory or page on your site:

User-agent: Google-Extended Disallow: /directory/ Disallow: /page.html

Alternatively, you can use the following syntax to allow Google Extended to crawl your entire site or a specific directory or page on your site:

User-agent: Google-Extended Allow: / Allow: /directory/ Allow: /page.html

You can also use wildcards (*) and pattern matching ($) to fine-tune your rules. For more details on how to use REP, please refer to the official documentation.

Google Extended and Google Search

One of the common questions that webmasters may have about Google Extended is whether it affects their site’s inclusion or ranking in Google Search. The answer is no. Google Extended does not impact Google Search in any way. It is only used for crawling content for AI version training, and now not for indexing or rating purposes. Google Search uses distinctive indicators and algorithms to determine which pages to reveal within the search outcomes, and Google Extended is not one in all them.

Google clarified this point in its up to date documentation of Google Extended, which turned into published on February nine, 2024. The documentation additionally reflected the name trade of Bard to Gemini Apps, that's certainly one of the goods that makes use of Google Extended for crawling content material. Gemini Apps is a collection of equipment that enables users create and edit content material using AI, together with writing blog posts, designing logos, composing tracks, and more. Vertex AI is another product that makes use of Google Extended for crawling content. Vertex AI is a platform that allows builders and statistics scientists to construct, install, and manage AI programs at scale.

Google Extended is a brand new and revolutionary manner for Google to leverage the extensive and diverse internet content material to enhance its AI products and services. It also gives webmasters more control and choice over how their content is used for this purpose. By using Google Extended, webmasters can contribute to the advancement of AI, or opt-out if they prefer. Either way, Google Extended does not affect their site’s performance or ranking in Google Search. Google Extended is a win-win situation for both Google and webmasters.