Googlebot
Crawls pages for Google Search using desktop and smartphone variants.
Web searchWeb search
Googlebot-Image
Fetches images for Google’s visual search features.
Operated by Google
See your agent traffic PurposeWeb search
HTTP identifierGooglebot-Image
IdentityVerify beyond the name
THE SIGNAL
What this visit tells you
Image requests belong to media discovery; they do not count as visits to the surrounding article.
URL coverage
Crawl errors
Repeat crawls
Your next move
Check image URLs and CDN access alongside the HTML page that embeds them.
The technical details
MarkdownHow to identify it
Look for the Googlebot-Image identifier in a request’s User-Agent. This is a name match, not identity verification. Version strings may change.
How to check identity
Use Google’s published IP ranges for this crawler class and its forward-confirmed reverse DNS procedure.
Access and robots.txt
The operator documents robots.txt rules for this identifier.
Optional full-site opt-out. Merge with existing rules only if intended. robots.txt does not secure private content.
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /Seeing 403 or 404 responses?
403 means access was denied; 404 means the resource was not found. Compare the public path, request time, edge security event and origin response to find the cause.
Separate intended restrictions and secret-file probes from pages that should work. A User-Agent name alone does not justify allowing a request.
SourcesReviewed 2026-09-14
Identity and purpose are based on these sources. Analytics interpretation and suggested checks are Apostl guidance.
APOSTL PulseSee Googlebot-Image in context
See their requests. Find the pages that matter.
See your agent trafficKEEP EXPLORING
Different bots, different intent
Google-Extended
Controls content use for Gemini training and grounding; it does not control Google Search inclusion.
Content-use policyPolicy control · no separate crawlerGooglebot-Video
Fetches video for Google’s video-related search features.
Web search