Bingbot: what it is and how to control it
Bingbot is Microsoft's web crawler for the Bing search index. Its robots.txt token is bingbot. Microsoft says it follows one robots.txt section only, preferring a bingbot section, then msnbot, then the wildcard, and honors Crawl-delay. Blocking it stops Bing from crawling your pages. Microsoft publishes its IP ranges as JSON.
| Operator | Microsoft, for Bing Search |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Search engine |
| robots.txt token | bingbot |
| User agent | No full string documented. Match on the robots.txt token. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes. Bingbot follows one robots.txt section (bingbot, then msnbot, then wildcard) and honors Crawl-delay, which overrides crawl settings in Bing Webmaster Tools. |
| Runs JavaScript | Not documented |
| IP ranges | Published list |
| Documentation | Microsoft |
What Bingbot does
Bingbot is Microsoft's main crawler for the Bing search index. It reads robots.txt at the root of each host and uses the first matching section among bingbot, msnbot and the wildcard.
Should you block Bingbot?
Allow Bingbot, and note that a bingbot-specific robots.txt section makes it ignore all other sections, so copy shared rules into it. Blocking bingbot stops Bing from crawling your pages. Microsoft's 2012 guidance also warns that an old msnbot block of Disallow: / can block Bingbot as well.
User-agent: bingbot
Allow: /User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /Rules that apply
- Rule 08: Ping IndexNow when URLs are added, changed or deleted, for Bing and partner engines
- Rule 03: Audit your CDN and WAF bot settings; they can block AI crawlers that robots.txt allows
- Rule 01: Allow OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot in robots.txt if you want AI citations
- Rule 04: Ship primary content in the initial HTML; most AI crawlers don't execute JavaScript
Questions
What is the Bingbot user agent string?
Microsoft's crawler list identifies Bingbot by the bingbot/2.0 token with a link to bing.com/bingbot.htm. The full string, including mobile variants, was not retrievable from Microsoft's page in plain text, so match on the bingbot token.
Does Bingbot respect robots.txt and crawl-delay?
Yes. Microsoft says Bingbot honors Crawl-delay in either its own section or the wildcard section. A Crawl-delay in robots.txt overrides crawl settings in Bing Webmaster Tools.
Why does a bingbot section ignore my other robots.txt rules?
Microsoft says Bingbot follows only one set of rules: a bingbot section if present, then msnbot, then the wildcard. If you add a bingbot section, copy your default rules into it.
How do I verify Bingbot requests?
Microsoft publishes Bingbot IP ranges as JSON at bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json.
Sources
- Which Crawlers Does Bing Use? · Microsoft
- To crawl or not to crawl, that is BingBot's question · Microsoft
- Bingbot IP ranges · Microsoft
Checked against the operators' documentation every Monday. Last reviewed Nov 2, 2026.