bingbot

Search Engine

Operated by Microsoft

Last updated:

Allow

Essential for organic search visibility.

Recommended action: Allow access and monitor crawl consistency.

Category

Search Engine

Primary use case

Web search indexing

Trust level

Review recommended

robots.txt

Unknown

bingbot Traffic (Last 90 Days)

Avg Share15.77%
Peak39.10%Apr 19
Total Visits32k
Active Days29/90

What is bingbot?

Search Engine Crawler bot

What bingbot means for your site

bingbot is how your pages get discovered and ranked in Microsoft search results. Regular crawling means your content is being indexed and updated. Crawl frequency often reflects how search engines perceive your site's authority and freshness. A drop in crawling can signal technical problems, while consistent activity indicates a healthy site.

What should you do?

  • Allow bingbot full access to your site
  • Check robots.txt to ensure important pages are not blocked
  • Monitor crawl frequency trends in BotSights
  • Investigate if crawl activity drops unexpectedly
  • Ensure your sitemap is accessible and up-to-date

See bingbot on your own site

BotSights tracks every bingbot visit in real time, including which pages it crawls, how often, and from where.

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How to identify bingbot

bingbot uses the user-agent "bingbot" and robots.txt compliance unconfirmed. Verify via reverse DNS: hostname should end in .search.msn.com.

bingbot

How to block bingbot

Three robots.txt options below. Pick the one that matches your goal. Each snippet lists every known bingbot user-agent pattern so the rules apply regardless of which one the bot announces. Compliance with robots.txt is unconfirmed for bingbot, so verify with crawl logs after deploying.

Edit robots.txt with care

A single misplaced line can de-index your entire site. Common mistake: pasting User-agent: * followed by Disallow: / blocks every bot, not just bingbot, including Googlebot. Always paste the snippet between existing rules (not over them), keep the User-agent line scoped to bingbot's patterns, and verify with Google's robots.txt tester before deploying. If you are not sure, ask a developer first.

Option 1: Block all access

Tells bingbot not to crawl any URL on your site. Use this when you want the bot completely off your content.

User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /

Option 2: Block specific paths only

Keep public content crawlable but exclude sensitive or non-public sections. Add one Disallow: line per path. Replace the example paths with your own.

User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /checkout/

Option 3: Slow down with a crawl delay

Crawl-delay is a voluntary directive that asks the bot to wait the given number of seconds between requests. Useful when bingbot is hammering your origin and slowing the site down for real visitors, but you do not want to block it outright. The value is in seconds, so 10 means at most one request every ten seconds. Not all bots honour this directive (Googlebot ignores it; Bingbot, Yandex, and many AI crawlers do respect it).

User-agent: bingbot
Crawl-delay: 10

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the User-Agent for bingbot?

bingbot identifies itself with the User-Agent string "bingbot". Use this in robots.txt rules and server-side filtering.

Should I block bingbot?

No. Blocking bingbot removes your pages from Microsoft search results and directly hurts your organic traffic. The only legitimate use case for blocking is on staging or development environments where you do not want indexing.

Should I block bingbot on my staging or dev site?

Yes — staging environments should not be indexed. Use robots.txt with "User-agent: bingbot / Disallow: /" or apply HTTP basic auth. Better: use a noindex meta tag plus a different hostname (staging.example.com) so production is unaffected.

Why has bingbot stopped visiting my site?

Common causes: robots.txt misconfiguration (accidental Disallow), server errors (5xx responses cause crawl-rate to drop), slow page load, soft 404s, or natural crawl budget adjustment. Check Search Console (or equivalent) for crawl errors first.

How does bingbot decide which pages to crawl?

bingbot prioritizes based on perceived page importance (links, freshness, content quality), site authority, and crawl budget. Submit a sitemap and ensure your most important pages are reachable from the homepage in 2-3 clicks for best coverage.

How can I tell if bingbot traffic is real and not spoofed?

User-Agent strings can be faked by scrapers pretending to be bingbot. For Bingbot, do reverse DNS: hostname must end in .search.msn.com. BotSights flags spoofed traffic automatically and shows a verified badge per visit.

Does bingbot respect Crawl-delay?

Yes. Bingbot honors Crawl-delay in robots.txt — set seconds between requests.

Monitor search crawlers before visibility drops

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  • Detect crawl drops and spikes instantly
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