What is Googlebot-Image? Google's search crawler
Googlebot-Image is the crawler Google says fetches images for Google Images, Discover and the image features in Search.
20 of the 1662 major websites we measure block Googlebot-Image in robots.txt (1%). 67 of those sites name it directly in their robots.txt; the rest are covered by a wildcard rule.
Key facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Operator | |
| Used for | Google Images and image features in Search |
| Type | Search engine. Builds a search engine's index. Listed here because people look it up beside AI crawlers. It isn't counted in the AI crawler figures. |
| robots.txt token | Googlebot-Image |
| Operator's documentation | Read it here |
What blocking Googlebot-Image does
Google says its common crawlers always obey robots.txt, and that a crawler uses the most specific group that names it, or the * group when none does.
How to allow or block Googlebot-Image
Add one of these groups to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain. It is a stated preference that well-behaved crawlers read, not an enforcement mechanism.
User-agent: Googlebot-Image Disallow: /
User-agent: Googlebot-Image Allow: /
Googlebot-Image user agent string
The string Google documents. Version numbers can change, so match on the name.
Googlebot-Image/1.0
How to verify a request is really Googlebot-Image
Anyone can put a crawler's name in a user agent string, so the name alone proves nothing. We did not find a published IP list or reverse DNS rule from Google.
How to whitelist Googlebot-Image in a firewall or CDN
robots.txt only states a preference. A firewall, CDN or bot protection service can still refuse the request, and the crawler then gets an error even though robots.txt allows it.
- Check that no group in your robots.txt blocks it, using the rule above.
- Add an allow rule in your firewall or CDN that matches the name in the user agent. Keep the rule narrow, because anyone can copy a name.
- Check your server logs for a 200 response from Googlebot-Image afterwards.
On Cloudflare, also check AI Crawler and Agent access policies, which can block search, agent and training traffic across a site.
Why Googlebot-Image gets a 403 or 405 error
A 403 means the server refused the request, which usually points to a firewall or bot rule. A 405 means the server refused the request's method, so check any rule that only permits certain methods. A crawler that obeys robots.txt won't request a page it is told to avoid, so an error in your logs points to your server's configuration. To stop it deliberately at the server, this nginx rule returns a 403:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "Googlebot-Image") {
return 403;
}Who blocks Googlebot-Image, by sector
| Sector | Sites measured | Blocking | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social and media platforms | 115 | 5 | 4% |
| Reference and research | 114 | 3 | 3% |
| Technology media | 126 | 4 | 3% |
| AI companies | 128 | 2 | 2% |
| Government and institutions | 98 | 2 | 2% |
| Finance and business media | 94 | 1 | 1% |
| News publishers | 182 | 2 | 1% |
| SaaS platforms | 196 | 1 | 1% |
| Developer references | 159 | 0 | 0% |
| E-commerce and retail | 92 | 0 | 0% |
| Health publishers | 88 | 0 | 0% |
| Hosting and infrastructure | 98 | 0 | 0% |
| SEO and marketing tools | 86 | 0 | 0% |
| Travel | 86 | 0 | 0% |
Sites blocking Googlebot-Image
afterpay.com, consilium.europa.eu, devclass.com, distill.pub, hackernoon.com, illinois.gov, linguee.com, lobste.rs, magento.com, netflix.com, pinterest.com, poe.com, reddit.com, reuters.com, sciencedirect.com, techtarget.com, theregister.com, todayonline.com, wordreference.com, x.com.
Sites that allow Googlebot-Image by name
abc.net.au, academia.edu, alibaba.com, apollo.io, arstechnica.com, bankrate.com, barrons.com, bestbuy.com, betterstack.com, buzzfeednews.com, cdn77.com, ctvnews.ca, digicert.com, disneyplus.com, doordash.com, ecwid.com, eltiempo.com, eluniversal.com.mx, facebook.com, fentybeauty.com, flickr.com, flipkart.com, fortinet.com, gap.com, gob.mx, golem.de, guru3d.com, hertz.com, heygen.com, hp.com, imdb.com, instacart.com, instagram.com, jd.com, lemonde.fr, leparisien.fr, lyft.com, marketwatch.com, mediamarkt.de, merckmanuals.com, and 25 more in the full dataset.
Other Google crawlers
Google-Extended (Gemini training control), GoogleOther (research and development fetch), Google-CloudVertexBot (Vertex AI on-demand fetch), Google-Agent (agents acting for users), Google-GeminiNotebook (user-added sources), Googlebot (search indexing), Googlebot-Video (video indexing), Googlebot-News (news indexing), Storebot-Google (shopping crawl), Google-InspectionTool (search testing tools), GoogleOther-Image (image fetch for research), GoogleOther-Video (video fetch for research), AdsBot-Google-Mobile (mobile ad quality), AdsBot-Google (ad quality), Mediapartners-Google (ad matching), APIs-Google (API push notifications), Google-CWS (Chrome Web Store checks), FeedFetcher-Google (feed retrieval), GoogleMessages (link preview), Google-Pinpoint (user-added documents), GoogleProducer (publisher feeds), Google-Read-Aloud (read aloud on request), Google-Site-Verification (site verification).
See all 36 AI crawlers, the rule change log or the full study. Being reachable is only the first step: how AI search engines choose what to cite covers the rest.
Cite this data
You are welcome to quote or republish these figures. Please credit IndexHalo with a link to this page (CC BY 4.0). All our datasets are on the data page.
IndexHalo. "Googlebot-Image block rate across major websites." Measured 12 November 2026. https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/googlebot-image/
<a href="https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/googlebot-image/">Googlebot-Image block rate across major websites, IndexHalo</a>