What is ImageBot?
ImageBot is a research crawler that collects images for machine learning datasets using img2dataset, an open-source tool for downloading, resizing, and packaging images from lists of URLs. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when ImageBot visits your website.
Overview
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
| Insights Last Updated | October 14, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
ImageBot tends to make broad, high-volume sweeps across many pages. Timing is unpredictable: traffic may remain heavy throughout a collection pass, then stop entirely.
ImageBot's User Agent
| User Agent | MKS-Steel-Market-ImageBot/1.0 (+https://portal.rdcloud.org) |
How To Block ImageBot With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block ImageBot from accessing your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all AI data scrapers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: ImageBot # https://knownagents.com/agents/imagebot
Disallow: /Insights for ImageBot
As of October 14, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block ImageBot?
Block ImageBot if you want more control over whether your work is used for AI training. Allowing it may increase the chance that your brand appears in AI-generated answers, but either choice leaves traditional search rankings unchanged. For context, 7% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for ImageBot.
Does ImageBot Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Yes. ImageBot is expected to follow robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the appropriate first step. Automatic Robots.txt can add and maintain that rule, while Agent Analytics lets you verify whether ImageBot respects it.
Does ImageBot Access Private Content?
Not through legitimate access. ImageBot primarily targets public content, but some training-data scrapers also attempt to collect gated or paywalled pages. If content loads without authentication, assume it can be collected.
How Can I Tell if ImageBot Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks ImageBot visits in real time. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "ImageBot". Look for high page counts, short gaps between requests, and deep traversal through linked content. Because ImageBot does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.
Why Is ImageBot Visiting My Website?
Your content matched the criteria its operator set for a training dataset. ImageBot typically discovers pages through external links, sitemaps, and seed lists rather than because someone selected your site individually.