AI crawlers · Search indexes
bingbot
bingbot is the search index crawler run by Microsoft: Bing / Copilot. Its operator publishes the IP ranges it crawls from (https://www.bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json), so a request carrying the name can be checked against that list.
| User-agent token | bingbot |
| Operator | Microsoft |
| What it does | Bing / Copilot |
| Kind | search index crawler |
| Can a request be verified? | Yes — published ip feed |
| Verification source | https://www.bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json |
| In a CrawlCheck scan | Sent as a request on every scan; a refusal is scored |
Allow or block it in robots.txt
User-agent: bingbot Disallow: /
User-agent: bingbot Allow: /
Add a group that names it: "User-agent: bingbot" followed by "Disallow: /". A crawler follows only the most specific group that names it, so once a group names bingbot, rules under "User-agent: *" no longer apply to it; repeat in that group any Disallow lines you still want.
What blocking it changes
Indirectly. It feeds Bing / Copilot. A refusal removes pages from that index, and most AI answer surfaces still draw on search indexes.
What it actually did on crawlcheck.io
| Verified requests | 8,279 |
| Requests using its name from outside its operator's ranges | 50 (0.6% of claims) |
| robots.txt fetched | 110 times |
| Fetches of paths robots.txt disallows | 1 |
| Observed | 2026-08-14 to 2026-11-12 |
Measured on this site’s own traffic, verified against the operator’s published ranges. Every agent’s record: agent conduct.
Other agents from Microsoft
BingPreview— Bing page previewmsnbot— Microsoft legacy crawlerAdIdxBot— Microsoft AdsCopilot-User— Microsoft Copilot fetch
See what bingbot and every other named agent receive from your own site: run a free scan. The full catalogue is on AI crawlers and as JSON at /ai-crawlers.json.