What is Bingbot?

Bingbot is a bot in the search engine crawlers category, operated by Microsoft.

Bot name
Bingbot
Operator
Microsoft
Type
Bot
Respects robots.txt
Yes
robots.txt user agent
bingbot
Main crawl location
United States (100%)
Reverse DNS
*.msn.com
Signs requests (Web Bot Auth)
No

About Bingbot

Bingbot crawler and handles most of Bing's crawling needs each day.

Search engine crawlers index your pages so they can appear in search results. Keep the genuine ones allowed and verify them, because fake search crawlers are one of the most common disguises for scrapers.

Bingbot user agent

Sample user agent strings sent by Bingbot:

  • Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) Chrome/136.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
  • Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)
  • Mozilla/5.3 (compatible; bingbot/2.1; +http://www.bing.com/bot.html)

Anyone can copy a user agent string. Transfon Security also checks where each request comes from, so a request that claims to be a known crawler but comes from the wrong network is treated as a fake, not as the real crawler.

Where Bingbot crawls from

Share of Bingbot requests to sites protected by Transfon Security in the 7 days to 27 October 2026.

Countries

United States100%

Networks

Microsoft Corporation AS8075100%

How to verify Bingbot

Genuine Bingbot IPs resolve to hostnames ending in msn.com. Run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP, then a forward lookup on the hostname, and check both match:

host 203.0.113.10          # the IP from your logs
host crawl-name.msn.com  # must return the same IP

How to block Bingbot in robots.txt

Bingbot follows robots.txt, so these rules stop it crawling the paths you choose. robots.txt is a plain text file at the root of your domain, such as https://example.com/robots.txt.

Block Bingbot from the whole site

User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /

Block Bingbot from some folders

User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /search

Allow Bingbot only on some folders

User-agent: bingbot
Allow: /blog/
Disallow: /

Allow Bingbot and block other crawlers

User-agent: bingbot
Allow: /

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Things to know

  • Each host needs its own file. Rules on www.example.com do not apply to shop.example.com.
  • A crawler obeys only the most specific group that names it. Once you add a User-agent: bingbot group, Bingbot ignores your User-agent: * rules, so repeat any that should still apply.
  • The user agent name is not case sensitive. We take bingbot from Bingbot's user agent; check Microsoft's own documentation if it publishes a different robots.txt name.
  • Crawlers cache robots.txt, so changes can take up to a day to apply. Disallow stops crawling but does not remove pages already collected or indexed.

Limits of robots.txt

  1. Bingbot may not follow the rule. Bingbot says it follows robots.txt, but nothing enforces that. Changes can take a day to apply, the operator can change its policy, and other crawlers from Microsoft use different names and rules.
  2. The user agent could be fake. robots.txt matches the name a request claims. Anyone can send Bingbot's user agent, and a scraper using it is not bound by Microsoft's robots.txt policy. Only checking the source network tells a real Bingbot from a fake one: genuine requests resolve to *.msn.com.

Treat robots.txt as a statement of your policy, and enforce it where requests arrive.

Who should care about Bingbot

Publishers

Bingbot brings search traffic, so keep the real one allowed. Fake Bingbot requests are a common cover for scrapers, so verify it by network rather than by name.

Transfon Security for publishers

Media buyers and advertisers

Search crawlers fetch landing pages to check them. Keep Bingbot allowed, but out of campaign and conversion data.

Transfon Security for advertisers

E-commerce

Bingbot indexes products for search results. Allow it, and block impersonators that use its name to scrape prices.

Transfon Security for e-commerce

SaaS and APIs

Allow Bingbot on marketing and docs pages, and keep it off signed-in app pages it cannot use.

Transfon Security for SaaS and APIs

Block Bingbot with Transfon Security

robots.txt is a request, not an enforcement. Transfon Security shows Bingbot by name in the Top Bots report, so you can see how often it visits and which pages it reads. Block or allow it with a User Agent rule, or slow it down with a rate limit decision rule.

Transfon Security

Control Bingbot on your site

  • See every Bingbot visit and the pages it reads
  • Spot bots that fake trusted crawler names
  • Block, allow or rate limit Bingbot with one rule
  • Works with or without robots.txt support

Frequently asked questions

What is Bingbot?

Bingbot is a bot in the search engine crawlers category, operated by Microsoft. Bingbot crawler and handles most of Bing's crawling needs each day.

Does Bingbot respect robots.txt?

Yes. Bingbot follows robots.txt, so a Disallow rule for the bingbot user agent stops it from crawling the paths you list.

How do I block Bingbot?

Add "User-agent: bingbot" followed by "Disallow: /" to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. To enforce it, block requests whose user agent contains "bingbot/" at your WAF. In Transfon Security that is one User Agent block rule.

Is robots.txt enough to block Bingbot?

No. robots.txt is voluntary, so Bingbot may not follow it, and anyone can send Bingbot's user agent, so a fake Bingbot ignores your rule. Enforce the rule where requests arrive, at your WAF, and check the source network.

How do I verify a real Bingbot request?

Run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP. Genuine Bingbot IPs resolve to a hostname ending in msn.com, and a forward lookup of that hostname returns the same IP. Anything else using its user agent is an impersonator.

Should I block Bingbot?

Search engine crawlers index your pages so they can appear in search results. Keep the genuine ones allowed and verify them, because fake search crawlers are one of the most common disguises for scrapers.

Related bots

All search engine crawlers · Full bot directory

See Which Bots Visit Your Site

Transfon Security identifies every bot in this directory in your traffic reports, flags fake search crawlers, and lets you allow, block or rate limit each bot.

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