Bingbot user agent
Operated by Microsoft
Bingbot is Microsoft's main crawler that indexes pages for Bing search and the answers in Microsoft Copilot.
The Bingbot bot at a glance
- Bingbot is operated by Microsoft and crawls web pages for a search engine index.
- The robots.txt token for Bingbot is bingbot.
- Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results.
- Bingbot robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is Bingbot?
Bingbot handles most of Bing’s daily crawling. Bing’s index also powers Microsoft Copilot answers and several other search products that license Bing results.
Blocking Bingbot removes pages from Bing and from AI products that rely on the Bing index.
Should you block Bingbot?
Allow Bingbot unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | AI features built on that search index, such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode on top of Googlebot, also lose access to your pages. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow Bingbot
Put the robots.txt rule in the file at the root of every domain and subdomain, for example https://example.com/robots.txt. The token bingbot is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Bingbot
User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Bingbot
User-agent: bingbot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Bingbot out of private areas only
User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Bingbot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(bingbot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Bingbot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (bingbot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "bingbot")How to verify real Bingbot traffic
Microsoft publishes the IP ranges that Bingbot uses. A request with the bingbot user agent from an IP outside that list is an impersonator.
Official Bingbot IP list (JSON)
Reverse DNS check: look up the request IP, confirm the hostname ends in search.msn.com, then look up that hostname and confirm it returns the same IP.
# 1. Reverse lookup: the hostname must end in search.msn.com
host REQUEST_IP
# 2. Forward lookup: must return the same REQUEST_IP
host HOSTNAME_FROM_STEP_1How to find Bingbot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Bingbot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "bingbot" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.
Bingbot user agent string
The full user agent Microsoft publishes for Bingbot. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)Bingbot FAQ
Bingbot identifies itself with the robots.txt token "bingbot". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)
Yes. Microsoft states that Bingbot follows robots.txt rules written for the "bingbot" token.
Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results. AI features built on that search index, such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode on top of Googlebot, also lose access to your pages.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: bingbot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Yes. Microsoft publishes the IP ranges Bingbot uses. Check the request IP against that list; a matching user agent from any other IP is an impersonator.
Search your server access log for "bingbot", for example with: grep -i "bingbot" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Microsoft crawler documentation. Last reviewed by Justin Hà.
See which of these bots actually reach your website
The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers in your server log, for free. The GEO Technical Package sets up robots.txt, llms.txt and crawler access for AI search.
