Bingbot is Microsoft's web crawling robot that discovers and indexes web pages for Bing Search and related Microsoft products, including Microsoft Copilot.

Does Bingbot affect Microsoft Copilot visibility?

Yes, Microsoft Copilot uses the Bing index to ground its answers. If your content is not indexed by Bingbot, it may not appear in Copilot's responses.

How can I control Bingbot's crawl rate?

You can adjust Bingbot's crawl rate in Bing Webmaster Tools. Bingbot also respects the Crawl-delay directive in robots.txt.

Does blocking Bingbot affect Yahoo and DuckDuckGo?

Partially. Yahoo Search uses Bing's index, so blocking Bingbot will remove your pages from Yahoo results. DuckDuckGo uses Bing's index as one of its sources, so your visibility there may also be reduced.

How do I verify a request is from Bingbot?

You can verify Bingbot requests by performing a reverse DNS lookup. Legitimate Bingbot IPs resolve to *.search.msn.com domains. Microsoft also publishes crawler IP ranges.

Microsoft

Bingbot

Bingbot is Microsoft's primary web crawler, responsible for indexing pages for Bing Search and powering Microsoft Copilot's AI-generated answers.

Current Rank

Traffic Share

5.97%

Operator

Microsoft

Bingbot Activity — Last 90 Days

Source: Cloudflare Radar

What is Bingbot?

Bingbot is Microsoft's web crawler used to discover, crawl, and index web pages for Bing Search. It is the second most active search engine crawler after Googlebot.

With the rise of Microsoft Copilot and AI-powered Bing, Bingbot's role has expanded beyond traditional search. Content indexed by Bingbot can now appear in Copilot answers, Bing Chat, and other AI-powered Microsoft products.

Bingbot respects robots.txt and supports the Crawl-delay directive, giving webmasters fine-grained control over crawl behavior.

How to Block Bingbot

You can block Bingbot from crawling your site using robots.txt. Note that this will also affect your visibility in Microsoft Copilot and AI-powered Bing features.

robots.txt

User-agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /

Blocking Bingbot removes your pages from Bing Search results and may reduce your visibility in Microsoft Copilot, Bing Chat, and other Microsoft AI products that rely on the Bing index.

Bingbot Technical Details

User-Agent string: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)

Respects robots.txt and supports the Crawl-delay directive

IP ranges can be verified via Bing Webmaster Tools

Supports JavaScript rendering for modern web content

Crawl rate can be adjusted in Bing Webmaster Tools

Also feeds content to Microsoft Copilot and other AI features

How Bingbot Affects Your Website

Bingbot is crucial for visibility in the Microsoft ecosystem. Bing Search, Microsoft Copilot, Yahoo Search (which uses Bing's index), and DuckDuckGo (partially) all rely on content indexed by Bingbot.

With AI search becoming more important, having your content indexed by Bingbot ensures it can appear in Copilot-generated answers and Bing Chat, which together serve hundreds of millions of users.

Frequently Asked Questions About Bingbot

: Bingbot is Microsoft's web crawling robot that discovers and indexes web pages for Bing Search and related Microsoft products, including Microsoft Copilot.
: Yes, Microsoft Copilot uses the Bing index to ground its answers. If your content is not indexed by Bingbot, it may not appear in Copilot's responses.
: You can adjust Bingbot's crawl rate in Bing Webmaster Tools. Bingbot also respects the Crawl-delay directive in robots.txt.
: Partially. Yahoo Search uses Bing's index, so blocking Bingbot will remove your pages from Yahoo results. DuckDuckGo uses Bing's index as one of its sources, so your visibility there may also be reduced.
: You can verify Bingbot requests by performing a reverse DNS lookup. Legitimate Bingbot IPs resolve to *.search.msn.com domains. Microsoft also publishes crawler IP ranges.

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