GoogleOther-Image
Google uses this crawler to collect content for AI model training. Google image data collection for research.
Crawler data last reviewed September 18, 2026 · all 61 crawlers
GoogleOther-Image at a glance
| Operator | |
|---|---|
| Type | AI training |
| Respects robots.txt | Yes — a Disallow rule is honored |
| If you allow it | If you want AI engines to know your brand and quote your pages from memory, this is the crawler that gets you there. |
| If you block it | If you monetize content behind a paywall or care about control, allowing broad training crawlers means giving that material away with no attribution loop. |
What is GoogleOther-Image?
Google image data collection for research. Training-data crawlers collect publicly available pages to build future AI models. Allowing one means your content can shape how models write and reason about your topics, and your site may be quoted from model memory. Blocking one keeps future training runs away, though anything already collected typically stays collected.
If you want AI engines to know your brand and quote your pages from memory, this is the crawler that gets you there.
Primary source: Google's official crawler documentation.
Does GoogleOther-Image respect robots.txt?
Yes. GoogleOther-Image honors robots.txt directives, including wildcard rules and Allow lines. A Disallow rule for this crawler is respected — but remember robots.txt is a voluntary protocol across the whole industry, not a wall.
How to block GoogleOther-Image
Add this group to your robots.txt to deny GoogleOther-Image across your whole site:
User-agent: GoogleOther-Image Disallow: /
If you monetize content behind a paywall or care about control, allowing broad training crawlers means giving that material away with no attribution loop.
How to allow GoogleOther-Image
GoogleOther-Image is allowed by default on every site. It only gets blocked if a matching rule exists — most often a global User-agent: * group with Disallow: /. To exempt it while blocking other bots, put an empty Disallow group for it before the global block:
User-agent: GoogleOther-Image Disallow: User-agent: * Disallow: /
Does blocking GoogleOther-Image hurt your Google rankings?
No. GoogleOther-Image is a distinct user agent from Googlebot and is evaluated separately in robots.txt. Blocking it does not change your Google Search ranking, indexing or classic organic traffic. Google documents this separation whenever it introduces a new agent, which is exactly why these AI-specific tokens exist.
How to verify GoogleOther-Image is really hitting your site
robots.txt states what a compliant crawler may fetch; your access log shows what actually happened. Search the log for the token:
grep -i "GoogleOther-Image" /var/log/nginx/access.log | tail -50
On Cloudflare the free plan does not expose raw request logs, so use Security Events to see blocked requests, or add a console.log line in a Worker to record the user agent. On Vercel or Netlify, filter the request log by user agent string.
User agents are trivially spoofable, which is why "I saw GoogleOther-Image in my logs" is not proof. Because GoogleOther-Image is documented to honor robots.txt, a request from it that ignores your rules is worth investigating — but a single stray hit is usually a misconfigured tool, not the real crawler.
Should you block GoogleOther-Image?
- Allow it if you want your brand and expertise inside future model knowledge — being in the training corpus is how an engine learns to describe what you do.
- Block it if you sell the content itself (paywall, course, licensed dataset) and want to keep it out of training runs. Remember that a block stops future collection only; anything already crawled stays in the dataset.
- Split the decision by keeping training crawlers out while leaving the operator's search crawler open, so you stay citable in AI answers without feeding model training.
Is GoogleOther-Image currently allowed on your site?
Paste your robots.txt into the free auditor and see verdicts for all 61 AI crawlers — including the specific paths that matter.
Other AI crawlers from Google
Google runs 9 distinct user agents. They are configured independently in robots.txt, so blocking one does not block the others — a detail that catches people out when they assume a single rule covers a whole vendor.
| Crawler | Type | robots.txt | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google-Extended | AI training | yes | Lets Google use content to train Gemini. Does NOT affect Search ranking. |
| Googlebot | AI search | yes | Classic Google Search crawler. NEVER block unless you want out of Google entirely. |
| Gemini-Deep-Research | AI assistant fetcher | yes | Fetches sources for Gemini Deep Research reports. |
| GoogleOther | AI training | yes | Google data collection outside the main search index. |
| GoogleOther-Image this page | AI training | yes | Google image data collection for research. |
| GoogleOther-Video | AI training | yes | Google video data collection for research. |
| Google-CloudVertexBot | AI training | yes | Builds models on customer's own Vertex AI instances (site-owner opted in). |
| Google-Agent | AI agent browser | yes | Fetches pages during Google AI agent tasks on a user's behalf. |
| Google-Gemini-CLI | AI agent browser | yes | Fetches pages explicitly requested by developers in Gemini CLI. |
Related AI crawlers
Further reading
- robots.txt for AI Crawlers: Every Rule That Matters — A 30-second robots.txt refresher, what each AI bot costs you when blocked, three copy-paste policies and the syntax mistakes that silently break your rules.
- llms.txt: The Proposed Standard for AI-Friendly Sites — llms.txt is a proposed markdown file at your site root that helps AI models find your best pages. Full format spec, a copy-paste example, and the tradeoffs.