What Google Image Proxy does
Google Image Proxy is the proxy through which Gmail serves images embedded in email: when users open a message, Gmail fetches the images through Google's secure proxy servers instead of letting the mail client load them directly from the origin server. Google describes it as protection for users and domains against image-based security vulnerabilities. Google Workspace administrators can configure an image URL proxy allowlist so that trusted internal image URLs bypass the proxy, using patterns that match a scheme, domain, and path. Google advises against disabling the proxy and recommends allowlisting only fully trusted, administrator-controlled domains.
How to control Google Image Proxy
Target Google Image Proxy in your robots.txt with the GoogleImageProxy token. Rules apply per bot, so you can allow this one while blocking others, or the reverse.
Allow Google Image Proxy
User-agent: GoogleImageProxy
Allow: /Block Google Image Proxy
User-agent: GoogleImageProxy
Disallow: /How to identify Google Image Proxy
Temso identifies Google Image Proxytraffic by matching the request's User-Agent header against this pattern. User-agent strings can be spoofed, so treat a match as an indication, not proof.
GoogleImageProxyGoogle Image Proxy FAQ
What is Google Image Proxy?
Google Image Proxy (GoogleImageProxy) is the proxy Gmail uses to serve images inside email messages: when a recipient opens a message, the images are fetched through Google's secure proxy servers to protect users against image-based security vulnerabilities. Workspace administrators can allowlist trusted internal URLs to bypass it.
How do I block Google Image Proxy?
Google's documentation for the image proxy does not describe robots.txt support; the proxy fetches images on behalf of Gmail recipients opening mail, not as a crawler. Blocking its requests at the server level would prevent your images from rendering for Gmail users.
About Operational Bots
Monitoring, security scanning, link previews, webhooks, and feed fetchers: the utility traffic that keeps integrations and shared links working.
Most of this traffic is service-critical or user-triggered. Webhooks and previews don't follow robots.txt, and blocking them tends to break things you rely on.
