In short. Googlebot-Image is Google's image crawler, with robots.txt access rules and separate controls for image indexing and search previews.

Definition: Googlebot-Image is Google's image crawler. As of 17 October 2026, Google's common crawlers documentation lists Googlebot-Image as a robots.txt user-agent token and Googlebot-Image/1.0 as its HTTP request identifier.

Key facts

Google's common crawlers documentation says its common crawlers obey robots.txt rules during automatic crawling.
Google's image removal guide places image-blocking robots.txt rules on the site that hosts the image.
Google's robots specifications define noimageindex as a page-level instruction against indexing images on that page.
Google's image SEO documentation says Google finds images through the src attribute of HTML image elements and does not index CSS images.

What does Googlebot-Image affect?

Google's common crawlers list says preferences addressed to Googlebot-Image affect Google Images and all Google Search features presenting images, logos or favicons. The same list also gives Googlebot as an applicable robots.txt token for this crawler.

For image discovery, Google's image SEO guide recommends standard HTML image elements. Its example embeds an image like this:

<img src="puppy.jpg" alt="A golden retriever puppy" />

The same guide recommends a fallback src URL when responsive images use srcset or the picture element. An image sitemap can also supply image URLs, including URLs on another domain.

How does robots.txt control image crawling?

A robots.txt file gives crawlers URL access rules. Google's image removal guide provides this example for an individual image:

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /images/dogs.jpg

The file belongs at the root of the image's hosting site. For images hosted on a separate domain, that domain's robots.txt controls access. Replacing the path with / blocks all image paths for this crawler.

Google's robots.txt specification selects the group with the most specific matching user agent. A specific crawler group and the global User-agent: * group are not combined. When a Googlebot-Image group exists, restrictions needed for that crawler must therefore appear in its applicable group. Multiple groups for the same specific user agent are combined internally.

How do indexing and preview controls differ?

Indexing is the inclusion of a resource in a search index. Google's image removal documentation describes an alternative to robots.txt blocking: send this HTTP response header with the image file:

X-Robots-Tag: noindex

The image URL must remain crawlable so Googlebot can read the header. The same documentation says that noimageindex on a containing page prevents image indexing through that page, but the image may still enter the index through another page.

Google's robots specifications separately define max-image-preview, which controls image preview size in search results. Its none setting suppresses previews; standard permits a default preview; large permits a larger preview up to the viewport width. Separately granted permissions, including some structured data uses or licensing agreements, can override that preview limit.

FAQ

Can I put an image's noindex instruction in HTML?

For the image file itself, Google's robots specifications direct you to the X-Robots-Tag response header for non-HTML resources. The containing page can carry its own robots meta tag.

Where should I check rules for images hosted elsewhere?

Check the image host. Google's robots.txt specification limits a robots.txt file's scope to its host, protocol and port; a subdomain's file applies only to that subdomain.

Sources

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