Microsoft

6 crawlers operated by Microsoft

https://www.bing.com/

Who Microsoft is, for site owners

Microsoft operates 6 crawlers in our directory, filed under AI & LLM Bots and Search Engines. Of those 6, 6 rated safe for crawl behaviour.

Blocking Microsoft carries an SEO impact score of 2/10 to 10/10 across its crawlers. 2 of them share the highest blocking impact here: Low - No SEO ranking impact.

Our recommendation for Microsoft, set by its least reassuring crawler (Bingbot, rated safe): Never block - it will remove your site from major search results.

Microsoft at a glance

Operator	Microsoft
Crawlers in directory	6
Categories	AI & LLM Bots, Search Engines
SEO impact if blocked	2/10 to 10/10
Crawl behaviour	6 rated safe
Website	www.bing.com
Official crawler docs	Microsoft crawler documentation

Crawlers operated by Microsoft

How to block or allow Microsoft in robots.txt

These rules cover all 6 crawlers Microsoft operates. Add them to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain.

Block Microsoft completely

User-agent: AzureAI-SearchBot
User-agent: AdIdxBot
User-agent: BingPreview
User-agent: BingVideoPreview
User-agent: bingbot
User-agent: MicrosoftPreview
Disallow: /

Allow Microsoft explicitly

User-agent: AzureAI-SearchBot
User-agent: AdIdxBot
User-agent: BingPreview
User-agent: BingVideoPreview
User-agent: bingbot
User-agent: MicrosoftPreview
Allow: /

robots.txt is a request, not an enforcement mechanism. A crawler that ignores it needs a block at the server or CDN layer. Rules are case-sensitive on the path and matched against the user-agent token, not the full user-agent string.

Frequently asked questions about Microsoft

What crawlers does Microsoft run?

Microsoft operates 6 crawlers in our directory: Azure AI Search (user-agent AzureAI-SearchBot), Bing Ads Crawler (user-agent AdIdxBot), Bing Page Snapshot (user-agent BingPreview), Bing Video Preview (user-agent BingVideoPreview), Bingbot (user-agent bingbot), Microsoft Preview (user-agent MicrosoftPreview).

Should I block Microsoft?

Never block - it will remove your site from major search results. That guidance follows this operator's least reassuring crawler, Bingbot, rated safe, because allowing an operator allows every crawler it runs. The SEO impact score for blocking is 2/10 to 10/10, where 10 means blocking costs you the most visibility.

How do I block Microsoft in robots.txt?

Add the following to robots.txt at your domain root: User-agent: AzureAI-SearchBot then User-agent: AdIdxBot then User-agent: BingPreview then User-agent: BingVideoPreview then User-agent: bingbot then User-agent: MicrosoftPreview then Disallow: /. One Disallow line covers all 6 user-agent tokens.

Does blocking Microsoft hurt my search rankings?

2 of these share the highest blocking impact here, rated: Low - No SEO ranking impact. Those are search-indexing crawlers, so blocking them can remove your pages from the corresponding search results. Block them only if you intend to leave that index. The remaining 4 crawlers in the list above do not affect search indexing and can be blocked separately.