See it on a real storeBots, pages and people sent by AI on an example store. No sign-up.Search engines, run by Microsoft.
What is Bingbot? Microsoft's search engine crawler. Verifiable by IP ranges and reverse DNS.
Run by Microsoft.
Purpose: Search engines. A visit means your page is being crawled for a classic search index.
robots.txt name: Bingbot.
Verifiable by IP ranges and reverse DNS.
At a glance, the facts in one table.
Bingbot at a glance. Taken from SenseGap's open bot directory, the same data that sorts every visit in the dashboard.
All bots| Bingbot | |
|---|---|
| Operator | Microsoft |
| Purpose | Search engines |
| User agent contains | bingbot, BingPreview, adidxbot |
| robots.txt name | Bingbot |
| Verification | IP ranges + Reverse DNS |
| Documentation | None listed |
Purpose, what it does and why it came.
What Bingbot does. SenseGap sorts every visit by purpose. Bingbot is in the Search engines group.
Bingbot is Microsoft's search engine crawler that indexes pages for Microsoft's search results. Bingbot crawls pages for Bing's search index, which Microsoft Copilot also draws on for web answers.
What a visit means
A visit means your page is being crawled for a classic search index. SenseGap keeps search engines in your reports so you can compare AI activity with them.
Comparing how often a search engine and AI assistants read the same pages shows which content AI relies on more, or less, than search does.
Detection, the header SenseGap matches.
How SenseGap recognizes Bingbot. By its User-Agent header. A separate check then decides whether the visit is real.
Every request carries a User-Agent header naming the software that sent it. SenseGap counts a request as Bingbot when that header contains any of bingbot, BingPreview or adidxbot, in any letter case. The header is plain text, so any script can copy it. Matching the name is where recognition starts, not where trust starts.
/bingbot|BingPreview|adidxbot/iVerification, how to tell a real visit from a fake.
How to verify Bingbot. Microsoft publishes its IP ranges and DNS names, so a real visit can be proven.
How we verify botsbingbot.json
Published by Microsoft at bing.com. A real Bingbot visit comes from an address in this list.
Open the listChecked on every visit
SenseGap runs both checks on every visit that claims to be Bingbot, IP ranges first, then reverse DNS confirmed by a forward lookup. A pass is marked Real. A visit that sends the name and fails is marked Fake, and stays out of your other reports.
- 01
Look up the visiting address
Run a reverse DNS lookup on the IP address the request came from. It returns a hostname.
- 02
Check the hostname
The hostname must end in .search.msn.com. Anything else is not Bingbot.
*.search.msn.com - 03
Look the hostname up again
Run a forward lookup on that hostname. It must return the same IP address, otherwise the reverse record could have been set by anyone.
$ host <visiting-ip>
… domain name pointer <hostname>.search.msn.com.
$ host <hostname>.search.msn.com
<hostname>.search.msn.com has address <visiting-ip>robots.txt, rules you can copy.
Block or allow Bingbot in robots.txt. Its robots.txt name is Bingbot. Paste a group into the robots.txt at your site's root.
User-agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /User-agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /private/One rule catches people out. Under the robots.txt standard (RFC 9309), a crawler that finds a group naming it follows only that group and ignores your User-agent: * rules. If you add a Bingbot group, repeat in it anything from the catch-all group you still want applied.
robots.txt is a request, not a lock. To enforce a block, match the User-Agent header at your server or CDN. In nginx:
# nginx, inside a server block
if ($http_user_agent ~* "bingbot|BingPreview|adidxbot") {
return 403;
}SenseGap reads your robots.txt and shows, bot by bot, what you allow and which bots fetched pages you disallowed. See what you get.
Trade-off, what blocking changes.
Should you block Bingbot? It depends on what you want from Microsoft. Here is what each choice means.
If you allow it
Your pages can rank and be found in that search engine.
If you block it
Your pages drop out of that search engine's results over time. For major engines this is rarely what a site wants.
Search engines, other bots with the same job.
Other search engine crawlers. Same purpose, different companies.
Browse the directoryFAQ, Bingbot in short answers.
Bingbot, answered plainly
What is Bingbot?
Bingbot is Microsoft's search engine crawler that indexes pages for Microsoft's search results. Bingbot crawls pages for Bing's search index, which Microsoft Copilot also draws on for web answers.
Who runs Bingbot?
Microsoft. SenseGap's directory has no documentation link for it yet.
What does a visit from Bingbot mean?
A visit means your page is being crawled for a classic search index. SenseGap keeps search engines in your reports so you can compare AI activity with them.
What user agent does Bingbot use?
Its User-Agent header contains one of "bingbot", "BingPreview" or "adidxbot". SenseGap matches any of these regardless of letter case.
How do I block Bingbot?
Add "User-agent: Bingbot" followed by "Disallow: /" to your robots.txt. robots.txt is a request, not a lock; to enforce it, block the user agent at your server or CDN.
How do I know a visit is really Bingbot?
Microsoft publishes the IP ranges Bingbot uses (bingbot.json), so check that the visiting address falls inside one of them. You can also run a reverse DNS lookup on the address: the hostname must end in .search.msn.com, and a forward lookup of that hostname must return the same address. SenseGap runs these checks on every visit.
Does Microsoft publish IP ranges for Bingbot?
Yes, at https://www.bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json.
What happens if I block Bingbot?
Your pages drop out of that search engine's results over time. For major engines this is rarely what a site wants.