Googlebot Image
Google operates Googlebot Image, a common crawler whose crawling preferences, per Google, affect Google Images, Discover, Google Video and all Search features that present images, logos and favicons. It honors robots.txt under the token Googlebot-Image and also matches the Googlebot token. Site owners verify it by reverse DNS to googlebot.com with matching forward lookup, or against Google's common-crawlers.json ranges.
Googlebot-Image/1.0What Googlebot Image does
Requests from this crawler carry the user agent Googlebot-Image/1.0. Google files it under its common crawlers, and its stated scope is images: Google Images, Discover, Google Video and any Search feature that presents images, logos and favicons. The documentation does not list which files the crawler requests or how often. The Googlebot documentation adds that Googlebot Image may have different file size limits from Googlebot, without publishing what those limits are.
Crawling preferences addressed to Googlebot-Image affect those same products, so a Disallow rule for it removes the affected images from Google Images, Discover, Google Video and image-bearing Search features. The robots.txt matching has one detail to keep in mind. Google lists both Googlebot-Image and Googlebot as tokens for this crawler, and a rule only has to match one of them to apply. A site that disallows Googlebot in robots.txt therefore also disallows Googlebot Image. Allowing it keeps images eligible for all of those features.
Google publishes the IP ranges for its common crawlers at developers.google.com/static/crawling/ipranges/common-crawlers.json. Reverse DNS on a Googlebot Image address resolves to crawl-***-***-***-***.googlebot.com or geo-crawl-***-***-***-***.geo.googlebot.com, and Google also accepts google.com and googleusercontent.com hostnames for its crawlers. A forward lookup on that hostname should return the same IP before you trust the request. Both methods come from Google's own verification page and either one is enough to confirm the crawler; the user-agent string alone is not proof.
Operator note. Common crawler; it also matches the Googlebot robots.txt token, since the docs list both 'Googlebot-Image' and 'Googlebot' as tokens and matching only one is needed for a rule to apply. The Googlebot page says Googlebot Image may have different file size limits from Googlebot.
Controlling Googlebot Image with robots.txt
Use the token Googlebot-Image in robots.txt. Google documents that Googlebot Image honors robots.txt directives.
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Allow: /Verifying a request is really Googlebot Image
Anyone can put Googlebot-Image in a User-Agent header. Reverse DNS to googlebot.com, google.com, or googleusercontent.com with matching forward DNS, or match the source IP against the published common-crawlers.json ranges.
host <request-ip>
# expect a hostname ending in googlebot.com (crawl-***-***-***-***.googlebot.com or geo-crawl-***-***-***-***.geo.googlebot.com)
host <that-hostname>
# expect it to resolve back to <request-ip>Google publishes a machine-readable list. Our probe read it on 2026-09-06; the file's own creation time was 2026-09-04.
- Prefixes
- 317
- IPv4
- 170
- IPv6
- 147
First entries at fetch time: 2001:4860:4801:10::/64, 2001:4860:4801:11::/64, 2001:4860:4801:12::/64
SHA-256 of the fetched body: 241e712f9c902b33aa4c0cc79268c34cb00c025edbc27298547be298763ddade
Common questions
Should I block Googlebot Image?
Only if you do not want your images to appear in Google Images, Discover, Google Video or image-based Search features, because Google says crawling preferences for this user agent affect exactly those products. If you block it, remember that a Disallow for Googlebot also applies to Googlebot Image, since it matches both tokens.
Does Googlebot Image run JavaScript?
The operator's documentation does not say. Google's crawler pages describe Googlebot Image by user agent, robots.txt tokens, IP ranges and its product scope, and note it may have different file size limits from Googlebot, but they make no statement about JavaScript execution for this crawler.
How do I verify Googlebot Image?
Run a reverse DNS lookup on the requesting IP and check that the hostname ends in googlebot.com, google.com or googleusercontent.com; the documented pattern for this crawler is crawl-***.googlebot.com or geo-crawl-***.geo.googlebot.com. Then confirm a forward lookup returns the same IP. Or match the IP against Google's published common-crawlers.json file.
Sources
Every fact on this page was checked against Google's own documentation, listed below, and re-checked by a second reviewer before publication. Reviewed September 2026.
- https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-common-crawlers
- https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/verify-google-requests
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/googlebot
- https://developers.google.com/static/crawling/ipranges/common-crawlers.json
Related crawlers
This registry documents how operators describe their own bots so site owners can identify and control them. It does not publish third-party IP lists or guess at undocumented behaviour. To see how your own site responds to automated visitors, the bot detection scanner reads a URL's live response and names the protection it finds.