Google NotebookLM Rebrand May Expose Your Site To More AI Scraping

Google has updated its database of Google user-triggered fetchers to bespeak the Google Notebook sanction change. Users who person hardcoded the aged personification supplier for robots.txt aliases for different reasons person a grace play of a fewer weeks earlier the aged personification supplier stops moving successful August 2026.

Reasons To Block Gemini Notebook

Gemini Notebook’s Discover Sources characteristic will scrape online articles without the tract owner’s permission. This characteristic scrapes up to 10 sources for the user’s defined query aliases topic, provides an AI summary, and generates nary referrals.

Gemini Notebook’s audio and video overview features repurpose online contented and move it into an audio podcast aliases a video explainer. This output, if utilized online, tin past compete against the original root material.

All of these ways of utilizing online contented to make different forms of contented are intended functions of Gemini Notebook. It automates the process of scraping and creating thing other from unsocial online contented without attribution to the original source.

Site owners who want to artifact Gemini Notebook will request to update their firewalls and .htaccess files successful bid for them to proceed working.

NotebookLM Is Now Gemini Notebook

NotebookLM has rebranded to Gemini Notebook. Gemini Notebook is the nonstop aforesaid thing. There is nary alteration to really it useful aliases what it does.

Gemini Notebook is simply a investigation adjunct that enables users to upload documents that tin service arsenic the crushed truth and alteration amended answers, research, and learning utilizing the uploaded material. Gemini Notebook is multimodal, meaning that it tin activity pinch YouTube and upload audio files.

Gemini Notebook’s multimodality besides useful successful the different direction. It tin move uploaded documents into an audio aliases video podcast episode, which tin beryllium adjuvant for learning astir a topic.

Why The Gemini Notebook User Agent Is Important

The portion that is meaningful for SEOs and website owners is that Gemini Notebook tin fetch web pages and usage them for the user’s research. This useful by either the personification pasting successful URLs aliases by utilizing the Discover Sources feature, which tin automate the process of uncovering articles and web pages to adhd arsenic sources for research.

The scrapers aliases crawlers utilized by Gemini Notebook are categorized arsenic user-triggered fetchers, and because they’re initiated by users, they do not obey robots.txt.

However, a tract proprietor tin group up a firewall norm to artifact the user-triggered fetchers aliases create an .htaccess norm to do the same.

Here’s an illustration of really to do it:

Project Mariner Completely Disappears

Project Mariner was retired successful May 2026 and Google’s archiving was updated to bespeak that.

The old documentation utilized to publication for illustration this:

“Associated products Google-Agent is utilized by agents hosted connected Google infrastructure to navigate the web and execute actions upon personification petition (for example, Project Mariner). It uses IP ranges from user-triggered-agents.json.””

The supra conception of the user-triggered fetcher archiving is different the aforesaid isolated from for the removal of this part: (for example, Project Mariner).

Mention Of NotebookLM Removed

The different alteration of consequence is the complete removal of Google NotebookLM from the documentation.

This is removed:

“Google NotebookLM
User-Agent successful HTTP requests Google-NotebookLM
Associated products The Google-NotebookLM fetcher requests individual URLs that NotebookLM users person provided arsenic sources for their projects.”

The removed conception has been replaced pinch caller archiving that reflects the sanction alteration to Gemini Notebook.

This is the new documentation:

“Gemini Notebook

User-Agent successful HTTP requests Mobile agent

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; K) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, for illustration Gecko) Chrome/138.0.0.0 Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Google-GeminiNotebook; +https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-gemininotebook)
Desktop agent

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, for illustration Gecko) Chrome/137.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 (compatible; Google-GeminiNotebook; +https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-gemininotebook)
Former supplier (supported until August 2026) Google-NotebookLM
Associated products The Gemini Notebook fetcher requests individual URLs that Gemini Notebook users person provided arsenic sources for their projects.”

As antecedently mentioned, the Google-NotebookLM personification supplier will proceed to usability until August 2026.

The changelog explains:

“If you hardcoded the aged worth successful your code, update the drawstring to debar imaginable bugs. We will proceed to support the aged worth to let for a soft transition.”

Takeaways

Google’s rebrand of NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook is accompanied by an update to its documentation. The caller archiving removes the aged personification supplier (Google-NotebookLM) and replaces it pinch archiving circumstantial to the caller personification supplier (Google-GeminiNotebook).

Site owners who usage the aged personification supplier to way aliases artifact Gemini Notebook crawler and fetcher activity person only a fewer weeks to update their firewalls aliases .htaccess files.

User-triggered fetchers still do not obey robots.txt. Robots.txt is not a directive. A directive is thing that a crawler must obey. So location is nary request for Gemini Notebook’s crawler to obey it. But tract owners tin still power entree to contented utilizing a firewall aliases an .htaccess file.

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