What Googlebot-Image does
Googlebot-Image is one of Google's common crawlers and fetches images with the user agent string "Googlebot-Image/1.0". Crawling preferences addressed to it affect Google Images, Discover, Google Video, and all features in Google Search where images, logos, and favicons are presented. In robots.txt it responds to the token Googlebot-Image, and when no Googlebot-Image group exists it follows your general Googlebot rules instead.
How to control Googlebot-Image
Target Googlebot-Image in your robots.txt with the Googlebot-Image token. Rules apply per bot, so you can allow this one while blocking others, or the reverse.
Allow Googlebot-Image
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Allow: /Block Googlebot-Image
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /If robots.txt has no group for the Googlebot-Image token, the crawler falls back to your general Googlebot directives.
How to identify Googlebot-Image
Temso identifies Googlebot-Imagetraffic 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.
Googlebot-ImageGooglebot-Image FAQ
What is Googlebot-Image?
Googlebot-Image is Google's image crawler, requesting files as "Googlebot-Image/1.0". It gathers images for Google Images, Discover, Google Video, and other Google Search features that display images, logos, and favicons.
How do I block Googlebot-Image?
Add a robots.txt group with "User-agent: Googlebot-Image" followed by "Disallow: /" (or specific paths). If no Googlebot-Image group exists, the crawler obeys your general Googlebot rules, so a site-wide Googlebot block also covers it.
About Search Engine Crawlers
Classic search indexers that now also feed AI features: Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode build on Googlebot's index, and Microsoft Copilot builds on Bingbot's.
Blocking these removes you from both traditional rankings and the AI answers built on top of those indexes, usually the most costly block of all.
