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Googlebot-Image: allow it or block it?

Googlebot-Image is Google's image crawler: it fetches the images, logos and favicons that Google Images, Discover, Google Video and Search features show. Allow it unless you want images out of all of those surfaces, not just the Images tab. It is a search crawler, not a training crawler, and its bare four-word header is easy to forge.

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AI traffic · attensira.com30 days to 4 Oct 2026

Not splitthe board does not count Googlebot-Image apart from Googlebot

Googlebot: 189 requests, may include it

Search engine crawlers on the board, beside attensira.com's rule for each
AgentAI requests, 30 daysattensira.com robots.txt
Googlebot-Image (this page)0Parent's rule
bingbot541Allowed
Googlebot189Allowed
Applebot0Allowed
Googlebot-Video0Parent's rule
GoogleOther0Allowed
GoogleOther-Image0Parent's rule
Kagibot0Wildcard
PetalBot0Wildcard

2 of 9 had requests filed in the window. User agents as sent, not checked against address lists.

Analyst agentAnalyst · reads the AI traffic boardAI traffic board, read over the Attensira MCP, and our live robots.txt · · n=143,601 AI requests
Karl-Gustav KallasmaaKarl-Gustav Kallasmaa, Founder & CEOLast updated

How do I allow or block Googlebot-Image in robots.txt?

Paste this into the robots.txt at the root of your domain. Beside it, the group attensira.com serves Googlebot-Image today.

robots.txt · for your sitepaste-ready
# Keep images out of Google Images without touching page# indexing.User-agent: Googlebot-ImageDisallow: / # Or scope it: block one directory of images, keep the# rest.User-agent: Googlebot-ImageAllow: /Disallow: /private-photos/
Example · a group to paste, written for the token Googlebot-Image
attensira.com/robots.txtvia a parent token
# No group names Googlebot-Image, so it reads the# Googlebot group.User-agent: GooglebotAllow: /Disallow: /api/
As served at attensira.com/robots.txt ·

We do not name Googlebot-Image. It follows the Googlebot group instead (Google lists Googlebot as its second token), which allows everything except /api/.

Read the whole file, or write yours with the robots.txt generator.

Who runs Googlebot-Image, and what is it for?

Google runs it, and we file it under search indexing. Fetches images, logos and favicons for Google Images, Discover and other Search features. A search crawler, not training: blocking it takes your images out of those surfaces, not your pages.

From Google’s documentation, read . Why a training fetch and a search fetch are different decisions: the AI crawler guide.

What do you lose if you block Googlebot-Image?

More than the Images tab. Google documents rules addressed to Googlebot-Image as affecting Google Images, Discover, Google Video, and all features in Google Search where images, logos and favicons are presented2. The last words are the ones that surprise people. This token governs the favicon beside your search result, the thumbnail on a Discover card and the image treatments Search uses across ordinary results.

So a rule written to keep photographs out of image search reaches all of it. That is how a site that only meant to stop image scraping ends up with no favicon in its search results. The robots.txt block above shows the safer shape: a scoped rule that blocks one directory of images and keeps the rest.

Is Googlebot-Image a search crawler or a training crawler?

Search. In the four-way job taxonomy of the AI crawler guide, this is search indexing: the fetch exists so a Google surface can show your image and link back to you. That separates it sharply from Google-Extended, Google's control token for Gemini training, and from the training crawlers of other operators.

The costs run opposite ways. Blocking a training crawler costs you nothing measurable. Blocking Googlebot-Image costs you image placements you can see in Search Console. They are different decisions and should never share a wildcard rule. And it is not the only Google agent that fetches images: GoogleOther-Image is a generic fetcher Google says affects no specific product, so it is the one to block if bandwidth is the concern.

How do I verify that a visit really came from Googlebot-Image?

A user-agent header is free text, so a log line naming Googlebot-Image is a claim until you check it.

Look up the visiting IP, confirm the hostname ends in one of the suffixes in the record, then look that hostname up and confirm it returns the same IP, or match the IP against the published ranges.

A common crawler, so it shares Googlebot's verification path. The four-word header makes spoofing unusually cheap, so the reverse-DNS round trip is the only thing that separates a real visit from a claim.

How do a Googlebot-Image group and a Googlebot group interact?

Google documents two robots.txt tokens for this crawler, Googlebot-Image and Googlebot, and states that where a crawler has more than one token, only one needs to match for a rule to apply4. Two consequences:

  • While there is no Googlebot-Image group, a group addressed to Googlebot governs image crawling. A site that disallowed Googlebot on a path has disallowed image crawling there too.
  • A specific Googlebot-Image group replaces the broader ones for this crawler. Google's crawlers follow only the most specific group that matches them and do not combine it with the Googlebot group or the wildcard1. A permissive Googlebot-Image group under a restrictive User-agent: * group is a real exemption, and any rule you still want for images has to be repeated inside it.

Write the groups you mean, for every token you care about, and fetch your robots.txt back to read what you actually published.

Why is a four-word header a problem?

Google publishes the header as Googlebot-Image/1.03. That is the whole string: no Mozilla/5.0 preamble, no platform, no URL.

That costs sites image coverage in a way that is easy to miss. Edge bot filters often admit anything that looks like a browser and reject the rest. This header does not look like anything, so a heuristic filter rejects it by construction, silently. If your images stopped being recrawled after a CDN or WAF change, check whether Googlebot-Image/1.0 still gets through.

The same shortness makes it cheap to forge: a scraper wanting the exceptions you grant Google types nineteen characters. Google states its common crawlers always obey robots.txt when crawling automatically5, but that says nothing about a request that merely carries the name. The verification section above has Google's procedure6. On this token, the header carries almost no information and the reverse lookup carries all of it.

VerificationGoogle
Reverse DNS ends in
*.googlebot.com*.geo.googlebot.com
IP range file
common-crawlers.json
Researcher agentResearcherTranscribed from Google documentation ·

How should you match Googlebot-Image in logs?

Filter on the bare token Googlebot-Image, case-insensitively, as a whole word. The 1.0 is a version Google may increment, which is why the string is flagged volatile above. A rule pinned to Googlebot-Image/1.0 stops matching without telling you; the traffic keeps arriving and your report simply shows less of it.

How does Googlebot-Image compare with Google's other image agents?

AgentDocumented effect of a rule
Googlebot-ImageGoogle Images, Discover, Google Video and image features in Search
GooglebotGoogle's search indexes; also a valid token for Googlebot-Image
GoogleOther-ImageNo specific product, per Google

For video, the sibling page is Googlebot-Video.

What can Attensira show you about Googlebot-Image?

AI traffic, on Growth and Business, counts which URLs crawlers fetch, image paths included, measured at the edge and reported per operator and declared purpose. It shows user agents as sent; the reverse DNS round trip stays yours. If you care how Google's AI answers present your brand, that is read separately: Attensira reads Google AI Overviews daily on every plan. See crawler logs and the robots.txt generator.

User-AgentGoogle
Googlebot-Image/1.0
Researcher agentResearcherTranscribed from Google documentation ·

Should I allow Googlebot-Image in my situation?

Concrete cases, and what each one implies for this agent.

  • You disallowed Googlebot-Image to stop image scraping and your favicon vanished from search results.

    Remove the blanket disallow and scope the rule to the directories you actually meant.

    Google documents this token as affecting every Search feature where images, logos and favicons are presented, not only the Images tab. A whole-site disallow is therefore much broader than the "keep my photos out of Google Images" intent that usually motivates it.

  • You wrote a Googlebot group allowing everything and a Googlebot-Image group blocking everything, and expected the specific group to win.

    Expect exactly that. Googlebot-Image follows its own group and ignores the Googlebot group and the wildcard, so put every image rule you want in the Googlebot-Image group.

    Google documents both Googlebot-Image and Googlebot as tokens for this crawler, and states that its crawlers follow only the group with the most specific matching user agent and ignore the others. The Googlebot group governs image crawling only while no Googlebot-Image group exists.

  • Your CDN's bot filter drops requests whose user agent does not look like a browser, and your images stopped being recrawled.

    Allowlist on a verified source address, not on the header.

    The published header is the bare string "Googlebot-Image/1.0" — no Mozilla preamble, no platform block, nothing a heuristic filter recognises as a client. Filters written to spot browsers reject it by construction. The fix is the reverse-DNS round trip, which a scraper copying the header cannot reproduce.

What else do people ask?

Why did my favicon disappear after I blocked Googlebot-Image?
Because Google documents favicons and logos among the Search features this token governs. A rule written to keep photographs out of image search also reaches the favicon beside your result. Scope the rule to the directories you mean, and keep the favicon path allowed.
Does a Googlebot rule apply to image crawling?
Yes. Google lists Googlebot as a second valid token for this crawler and says only one token needs to match for a rule to apply. A path disallowed for Googlebot is disallowed for image crawling too, whether or not you meant it.
Is Googlebot-Image used for AI training?
Google documents it as a search crawler for image surfaces. Google's documented control for training future Gemini models is Google-Extended, a separate token that sends no requests. Do not use one to decide the other.

Where do these facts come from?

6 claims on this page, each with the page it was read from; last checked . The numbers in the text point here.

  1. Google documents that only one robots.txt group is valid for a particular crawler. Its crawlers follow the group with the most specific user agent that matches and ignore the others, and user-agent-specific groups are not combined with the * group.

    developers.google.com · retrieved

    “Only one group is valid for a particular crawler.”

  2. Google documents crawling preferences addressed to the Googlebot-Image user agent as affecting Google Images, Discover, Google Video, and all features in Google Search where images, logos, and favicons are presented.

    developers.google.com · retrieved

    “Google Images, Discover, Google Video, and all features in Google Search where images, logos, and favicons are presented.”

  3. Google publishes Googlebot-Image's User-Agent in HTTP requests as "Googlebot-Image/1.0".

    developers.google.com · retrieved · changes often, check the source

    “Googlebot-Image/1.0”

  4. Google documents two robots.txt user agent tokens for this crawler, Googlebot-Image and Googlebot, and states that some crawlers have more than one user agent token and only one needs to match for a rule to apply.

    developers.google.com · retrieved

    “Some crawlers have more than one user agent token; you need to match only one crawler token for a rule to apply.”

  5. Google states that its common crawlers always obey robots.txt rules when crawling automatically.

    developers.google.com · retrieved

    “They always obey robots.txt rules when crawling automatically.”

  6. Google documents verifying its crawlers by reverse DNS lookup on the accessing address, checking the domain name is googlebot.com, google.com or googleusercontent.com, then a forward lookup back to the same address; the common crawlers' reverse DNS mask matches crawl-***-***-***-***.googlebot.com or geo-crawl-***-***-***-***.geo.googlebot.com and their ranges are published in common-crawlers.json.

    developers.google.com · retrieved

    “Verify that the domain name is either googlebot.com, google.com, or googleusercontent.com.”

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