Bingbot (Microsoft): User Agent, robots.txt Rules & Safety

Q: What is the official user-agent string for Bingbot?

The official user-agent string for Bingbot is: bingbot . This is the exact string you must use in robots.txt, Nginx, Apache, or Cloudflare firewall rules to target this bot. User-agent matching in robots.txt is case-insensitive, but the string must be spelled correctly. You can verify that a request genuinely comes from Bingbot by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP - legitimate bots resolve back to their operator's domain.

Q: Is Bingbot safe?

Yes, Bingbot is a safe and legitimate crawler. It is operated by Microsoft, which publicly documents its crawler at an official URL and follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309). The user-agent string bingbot is verifiable via reverse-DNS lookup on the crawling IP addresses. You can safely allow it unless you have a specific reason to block (e.g., AI training opt-out or SEO tool visibility).

Q: Will blocking Bingbot hurt my SEO?

⛔ Critical Impact - Blocking Bingbot will stop Microsoft from crawling and indexing your pages. Within days or weeks you may see pages drop out of Microsoft's search index entirely, resulting in a significant loss of organic search traffic. This is the most severe possible SEO consequence. Only do this intentionally, for example if you are migrating to a different search engine or decommissioning a domain. If you accidentally blocked Bingbot, remove the rule immediately and request re-indexing via Microsoft's webmaster tools.

Q: How do I block Bingbot in robots.txt?

Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file: User-agent: bingbot Disallow: / This instructs Bingbot not to crawl any path on your site. The Disallow: / directive covers the entire domain including subfolders. To only block specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g., Disallow: /blog/ ). Note: robots.txt is publicly readable - any bot or human can inspect it at yourdomain.com/robots.txt .

Q: How do I verify if Bingbot is crawling my site?

Search your web server access logs for the string bingbot (case-insensitive grep: grep -i "bingbot" /var/log/nginx/access.log ). You can also check Google Search Console → Coverage → Crawl Stats for Googlebot variants. For Bingbot specifically, filter by user-agent in your log analysis tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).

Quick Facts

User-Agent:: bingbot
Category:: Search Engines
Operator:: Microsoft
Safety:: Safe
Blocking Impact:: Critical - Blocking removes you from search results
SEO Impact Score:: 10/10
Official docs:: www.bing.com

Confirmed by the operator

Microsoft names bingbot on its own documentation page, linked above. The token, purpose and robots.txt behaviour on this profile come from that page, re-checked on October 19, 2026.

What is Bingbot?

Bingbot is the standard web crawler for Microsoft's Bing search engine. It allows your website to appear in Bing search results and powers search experiences across the Microsoft ecosystem.

Bingbot is the standard web crawler for Microsoft's Bing search engine. It allows your website to appear in Bing search results and powers search experiences across the Microsoft ecosystem.
Bingbot is a production-grade search engine crawler operated by Microsoft. It uses a distributed crawl infrastructure that respects crawl-delay directives, follows RFC 9309 (robots.txt) spec, and processes Sitemaps to prioritise fresh content. The user-agent string bingbot must be whitelisted if your site uses rate-limiting or WAF rules. Blocking impact is Critical - Blocking removes you from search results.

What happens if you block Bingbot?

⛔ Critical Impact - Blocking Bingbot will stop Microsoft from crawling and indexing your pages. Within days or weeks you may see pages drop out of Microsoft's search index entirely, resulting in a significant loss of organic search traffic. This is the most severe possible SEO consequence. Only do this intentionally, for example if you are migrating to a different search engine or decommissioning a domain. If you accidentally blocked Bingbot, remove the rule immediately and request re-indexing via Microsoft's webmaster tools.

Never block - it will remove your site from major search results.

How to block Bingbot with robots.txt

<code>User-agent: bingbot</code> - Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately.

Block completely (robots.txt)

User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /

Allow all (robots.txt)

User-agent: bingbot
Allow: /

Block private only (robots.txt)

User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /admin/
Allow: /

Nginx server block

# Nginx: Hard-block Bingbot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "bingbot") {
    return 403 "Bot blocked";
}

Apache .htaccess

# Apache: Hard-block Bingbot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "bingbot" bad_bot
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=bad_bot

Meta robots tag

X-Robots-Tag header

X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow

Is Bingbot safe to allow?

Yes, Bingbot is a safe and legitimate crawler. It is operated by Microsoft, which publicly documents its crawler at an official URL and follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309). The user-agent string bingbot is verifiable via reverse-DNS lookup on the crawling IP addresses. You can safely allow it unless you have a specific reason to block (e.g., AI training opt-out or SEO tool visibility).

Verify by reverse-DNS lookup: legitimate Bingbot requests resolve to microsoft's domain.

What does Bingbot do?

Understanding Bingbot's purpose helps you decide whether to allow or block it.

Crawls and indexes web pages for search results
Discovers new and updated content on your website
Analyzes page structure, content, and links for ranking
Renders JavaScript to understand dynamic content
Checks for mobile-friendliness and page speed

Bingbot in context

Bingbot is a search engine crawler operated by Microsoft. In plain terms, it builds a search or answer index. Our database files it under search engines and ranks it Tier 3, mid-priority crawlers with a clear purpose but a smaller audience. 62 of the 63 search engines in our database share this tier.

Its safety rating is safe and its blocking impact is critical. So Bingbot is both well behaved and costly to lose: the strongest case for allowing it. How we rate safety and impact.

How site owners treat Bingbot

In our own study of robots.txt files across the Tranco top 10,000 sites (fetched October 20, 2026, 5,583 valid files), 397 files (7.1%) name Bingbot in a User-agent line, and 182 (3.3%) block it from the homepage. 21 of those blocks come from a group written for this crawler by name, and 161 come from a broad User-agent: * rule that catches it by accident. Larger sites are stricter: 3.8% of the top 1,000 block it, against 3.5% of the middle band and 3% of the tail.

Does it follow robots.txt?

Bingbot's operator says it follows robots.txt, so a correctly written Bingbot group is enough to control it.

Microsoft crawlers and close alternatives

Bingbot is one of 6 Microsoft crawlers in our database. A User-agent: bingbot group controls Bingbot only; the other Microsoft tokens below need their own lines.

bingbot: this crawler (Tier 3)
AdIdxBot: Bing Ads Crawler, checks pages for an SEO, uptime or analytics service (Tier 3)
AzureAI-SearchBot: Azure AI Search, builds a search or answer index (Tier 2)
BingPreview: Bing Page Snapshot, builds a search or answer index (Tier 3)
BingVideoPreview: Bing Video Preview, builds a search or answer index (Tier 3)
MicrosoftPreview: Microsoft Preview, fetches a page to build a link preview when someone shares it (Tier 3)

To give Bingbot the same answer as its siblings, stack User-agent: bingbot with their lines above one set of rules; to treat Bingbot differently, give it its own group.

Other search engines that do the same job (builds a search or answer index) include Amzn-SearchBot from Amazon, Applebot from Apple, baidu from Baidu, Baiduspider from Baidu, Baiduspider-favo from Baidu, Baiduspider-image from Baidu. Deciding about Bingbot is usually a decision about the whole group, so check how your file treats these too.

We first recorded bingbot on March 17, 2026. Microsoft documents it on bing.com, and we recheck that page before each release.

Which rule Bingbot actually follows

Bingbot reads exactly one group in robots.txt, the most specific one that names bingbot, and never combines rules across groups. This short file shows the trap:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/

User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /drafts/

Find the group. Bingbot looks for a group naming bingbot. One exists, so it ignores User-agent: * completely.
Apply only that group. It is refused /drafts/ and nothing else.
The surprise. /private/ is open to Bingbot, because that rule lives in the * group it no longer reads. To keep it out of both, repeat Disallow: /private/ inside its own group.

Test yourself: does a rule under User-agent: * apply to Bingbot if the file also has a User-agent: bingbot group?

No. Once a group names it, Bingbot reads only that group. Put every rule you want it to follow inside its own group.

Test yourself: will blocking Bingbot remove your pages from AI answers?

Often, yes. Bingbot is a search engine crawler, so pages it cannot fetch can drop out of the answers or results it supports.

Test yourself: is User-agent: bingbot the same as User-agent: bingbot?

Yes. RFC 9309 makes user-agent matching case-insensitive. Paths are a different story: Disallow: /Blog/ does not block /blog/.

Should you allow Bingbot? Decide by situation

Recommended setting for Bingbot by type of site
If you are...	Recommended setting
You publish content and want AI answers to cite it	Allow it. It is how this search engine finds your pages.
You license content and want to stop AI training	Blocking it does not stop training, because Bingbot is a search engine crawler. Block the operator's training crawler instead.
You run an online shop	Allow it unless it is overloading your servers.
Your server is under load from bots	Rate-limit before blocking. It is rated safe in our database.

Check Bingbot on your own site

Open /robots.txt on your domain and search for bingbot. If it is not named, it follows User-agent: *.
List the Disallow lines in the group Bingbot follows and test your key URLs against them; the longest match wins, and Allow wins a tie.
Look beyond the file. A firewall or bot manager can refuse Bingbot even when robots.txt allows it, and that never shows in the file.
Run our GPTBot and ClaudeBot access check to see how Bingbot and every other crawler we track are treated in one pass, including firewall refusals.

Common mistakes with Bingbot

The errors we see most often with Bingbot in the files and firewalls we test:

Blocking Bingbot to save bandwidth and then wondering why pages drop out of that search engine. Use crawl-rate settings or caching first.
Writing a User-agent: bingbot group to add one rule for Bingbot and accidentally dropping every rule it used to follow under User-agent: *.
Disallowing CSS and JavaScript folders, which can stop Bingbot rendering your pages properly.

All three hide inside a file that looks correct, so check Bingbot from outside after every change.

Spotting Bingbot in your logs

robots.txt says what Bingbot may do; your access logs show what it actually did.

Count requests

On a server with standard Nginx or Apache logs, this counts matching requests per day (adjust the log path for your host):

grep -iE "bingbot" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
  | awk '{print $4}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c

And this shows which paths it requested most, which is the quickest way to see whether your Disallow lines are being respected:

grep -iE "bingbot" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
  | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20

Check the requests are genuine

Anyone can send the Bingbot user-agent, so confirm the source before acting on a match:

bingbot: compare each address with the ranges at www.bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json. A request claiming to be Bingbot from outside them is not genuine.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the official user-agent string for Bingbot?

The official user-agent string for Bingbot is: bingbot. This is the exact string you must use in robots.txt, Nginx, Apache, or Cloudflare firewall rules to target this bot. User-agent matching in robots.txt is case-insensitive, but the string must be spelled correctly. You can verify that a request genuinely comes from Bingbot by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP - legitimate bots resolve back to their operator's domain.

Is Bingbot safe?

Yes, Bingbot is a safe and legitimate crawler. It is operated by Microsoft, which publicly documents its crawler at an official URL and follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309). The user-agent string bingbot is verifiable via reverse-DNS lookup on the crawling IP addresses. You can safely allow it unless you have a specific reason to block (e.g., AI training opt-out or SEO tool visibility).

Will blocking Bingbot hurt my SEO?

⛔ Critical Impact - Blocking Bingbot will stop Microsoft from crawling and indexing your pages. Within days or weeks you may see pages drop out of Microsoft's search index entirely, resulting in a significant loss of organic search traffic. This is the most severe possible SEO consequence. Only do this intentionally, for example if you are migrating to a different search engine or decommissioning a domain. If you accidentally blocked Bingbot, remove the rule immediately and request re-indexing via Microsoft's webmaster tools.

How do I block Bingbot in robots.txt?

Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file:

User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /

This instructs Bingbot not to crawl any path on your site. The Disallow: / directive covers the entire domain including subfolders. To only block specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g., Disallow: /blog/). Note: robots.txt is publicly readable - any bot or human can inspect it at yourdomain.com/robots.txt.

Does Bingbot respect robots.txt?

Yes - Bingbot is a well-behaved bot operated by Microsoft. It fetches and parses /robots.txt before crawling any page, following RFC 9309.

How do I verify if Bingbot is crawling my site?

Search your web server access logs for the string bingbot (case-insensitive grep: grep -i "bingbot" /var/log/nginx/access.log). You can also check Google Search Console → Coverage → Crawl Stats for Googlebot variants. For Bingbot specifically, filter by user-agent in your log analysis tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).

What is the crawl frequency of Bingbot?

Critical-impact search crawlers like Bingbot typically crawl popular pages daily and less popular pages weekly. You can manage crawl rate via the crawl-delay directive or via the search console.

Can I block Bingbot from specific pages only?

Yes. Instead of a global Disallow: / you can restrict Bingbot to specific paths:

User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /staging/
Allow: /

This allows Bingbot everywhere except the listed paths. Path matching in robots.txt uses prefix matching - Disallow: /private/ blocks /private/page.html but NOT /public/private/.

How do I check if Bingbot is blocked by my robots.txt?

Use Google's robots.txt Tester in Search Console, or a third-party checker to simulate a Bingbot request. You can also manually check by opening https://aicrawlercheck.com/robots.txt and scanning for bingbot entries. If a block exists, immediately test it against your most important URLs using the Google Search Console URL Inspection tool.

My site is blocked by Bingbot in Search Console - what do I do?

1. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for any User-agent: bingbot or User-agent: * Disallow rules covering your key pages.
2. Remove or restrict the blocking rules.
3. Validate via Google Search Console → robots.txt Tester.
4. Request re-indexing using the URL Inspection tool.
5. Wait 1-2 weeks for re-crawl. Monitor Coverage report for recovery.