Bingbot: Bing’s crawler and its role in AI answers
Bingbot crawls for Bing search, whose index also grounds Microsoft Copilot answers. Its user agent, IP list, verification and AI controls.
Updated
Bingbot is Microsoft’s main crawler for Bing search. It matters for AI visibility too: Bing’s index is used to ground Microsoft Copilot answers, so a page Bingbot can’t crawl can’t be found there either. Bingbot follows robots.txt, and Bing offers separate meta tags if you want to limit how your content is used in AI answers without leaving Bing.
| Owner | Microsoft |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Search and AI |
| robots.txt token | bingbot |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Published IP ranges | www.bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json |
| If you block it | You drop out of Bing, and of the AI answers grounded in Bing’s index. |
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)The string above is the long-standing Bingbot user agent, introduced on Bing’s webmaster blog. Bing’s current crawlers also use strings that include a Chrome version for rendering; they all contain the token bingbot, which is what to match. We could not read Bing’s current help page directly, so check it for the latest full strings.
What does Bingbot do?
It crawls and renders pages for Bing’s index. That index powers Bing’s results and the AI experiences Microsoft builds on Bing, including Copilot’s web answers.
How do I control how Bing uses my content in AI answers?
Bing announced in 2023 that two existing robots meta tags control use of content in its chat answers and training:
| Tag | Effect described by Bing (2023) |
|---|---|
noarchive | Content is not used in chat answers or to train Microsoft’s generative models. |
nocache | Only the URL, title and snippet may be used in chat answers and training. |
| Neither | Content may be used in chat answers and for training. |
Pages with either tag stay in regular Bing search results.
<meta name="bingbot" content="nocache">How do I allow or block Bingbot?
User-agent: bingbot
Allow: /Blocking it with Disallow: / removes you from Bing and from what is built on Bing’s index. There is rarely a good reason to.
How do I verify Bingbot?
Do a reverse DNS lookup on the IP: a real Bingbot hostname ends in search.msn.com. Then do a forward lookup to confirm it resolves back to the same IP. Bing also offers a Verify Bingbot tool and publishes its IP ranges at bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json.
Should you allow Bingbot?
Yes. Then help it with a sitemap in Bing Webmaster Tools and IndexNow pings. Check your robots.txt with the robots.txt tester.
Sources
Common questions
Why is Bingbot on a list of AI crawlers?
Because Bing's index is not only used for Bing's results. Microsoft's Copilot grounds answers in Bing, so a site Bingbot can't crawl can't be found that way. Blocking Bingbot to avoid AI use would also remove you from Bing search.
Is there a Bing-Extended token, like Google-Extended?
Not as a robots.txt token. Bing's documented controls for AI answers are the NOARCHIVE and NOCACHE robots meta tags, which leave your pages in regular Bing results.
How do I get pages into Bing faster?
Submit your sitemap in Bing Webmaster Tools and use IndexNow, which tells Bing and other participating engines about new and changed URLs as soon as you publish.