AdIdxBot user agent
Operated by Microsoft
AdIdxBot is the crawler Microsoft Advertising (Bing Ads) uses to check ads and their landing pages.
The AdIdxBot bot at a glance
- AdIdxBot is operated by Microsoft and checks landing pages for an advertising platform.
- The robots.txt token for AdIdxBot is adidxbot.
- Blocking a platform fetcher has no effect on organic search rankings.
- AdIdxBot robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is AdIdxBot?
AdIdxBot crawls ads and follows them to the advertised websites for quality control. It has desktop and mobile variants.
Advertisers on Microsoft Advertising should allow it.
Should you block AdIdxBot?
Allow AdIdxBot unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking a platform fetcher has no effect on organic search rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking breaks the feature the fetcher serves, such as ad approval or feed updates. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow AdIdxBot
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 adidxbot is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block AdIdxBot
User-agent: adidxbot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow AdIdxBot
User-agent: adidxbot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep AdIdxBot out of private areas only
User-agent: adidxbot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to AdIdxBot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(adidxbot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to AdIdxBot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (adidxbot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "adidxbot")How to verify real AdIdxBot traffic
Microsoft publishes the IP ranges that AdIdxBot uses. A request with the adidxbot user agent from an IP outside that list is an impersonator.
Official AdIdxBot 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 AdIdxBot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts AdIdxBot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "adidxbot" 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.
AdIdxBot user agent string
The full user agent Microsoft publishes for AdIdxBot. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; adidxbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)AdIdxBot FAQ
AdIdxBot identifies itself with the robots.txt token "adidxbot". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; adidxbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)
Yes. Microsoft states that AdIdxBot follows robots.txt rules written for the "adidxbot" token.
Blocking a platform fetcher has no effect on organic search rankings. Blocking breaks the feature the fetcher serves, such as ad approval or feed updates.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: adidxbot" 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 AdIdxBot 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 "adidxbot", for example with: grep -i "adidxbot" 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.
