What is Bingbot and how does it affect my site?

Bingbot is Microsoft's primary web crawler that indexes content for both Bing Search and Bing Chat (Microsoft Copilot). It uses multiple user agent strings to identify itself while crawling websites.

How can I identify Bing AI crawlers?

Bing AI crawlers can be identified through their specific user agent strings starting with 'Mozilla/5.0' and including 'bingbot/2.0'. Check server logs and use Microsoft's Verify Bingbot tool.

Can I control how Bing AI accesses my content?

Yes. You can use robots.txt directives, meta robots tags, and the Crawl Control tool in Bing Webmaster Tools to specify which parts of your site Bing can crawl and index.

xSeek/Docs/User agents/Bing AI

⌘K

Back to documentation

Bing AI user agents, explained.

Microsoft Bing and Copilot share a family of crawlers. Understand each one, verify authenticity, and tune access for AI answers.

Bing AI · MicrosoftUpdated Apr 2026~8 min read4 user agents

TL;DR

Microsoft operates Bingbot (search + Copilot), AdIdxBot (ads), BingPreview, and MicrosoftPreview. They share the Bing UA family and can be verified via Microsoft's official Verify Bingbot tool.

Overview

Bing AI (Microsoft Copilot) is powered by Bing's search index. The same crawlers that build the index also feed Copilot's answers, so optimizing for Bing Search and Bing AI is effectively the same exercise.

Microsoft ships several UA variants — desktop, mobile, and the W.X.Y.Z placeholder is substituted with the current Microsoft Edge version at crawl time.

How to identify the agents

4 crawlers

Bing AI identifies itself with specific user-agent strings. Verify each through a published IP range.

Bingbot

Search + Copilot · primary crawler

Search indexCopilot

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36

Microsoft's primary crawler. Powers Bing Search results and Copilot answers. The W.X.Y.Z placeholder resolves to the current stable Edge version — Microsoft updates their render engine to match.

VerifiableVerify Bingbot tool

AdIdxBot

Bing Ads · quality crawler

Ads

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; adidxbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)

Used by Bing Ads to crawl advertisements and the landing pages they link to for quality control. Has desktop, iOS, and mobile variants.

VerifiableMicrosoft docs

BingPreview

Page snapshots · renderer

Preview

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36

Generates page snapshots used in Bing search result previews. Desktop and mobile variants available.

VerifiableMicrosoft docs

MicrosoftPreview

Microsoft product previews

Preview

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; MicrosoftPreview/2.0; +https://aka.ms/MicrosoftPreview) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36

Renders page snapshots for Microsoft products beyond Bing. Desktop and mobile variants follow the same pattern as BingPreview.

Verifiableaka.ms/MicrosoftPreview

How Bing AI accesses your content

3 access patterns, mapped to the agents above.

Search + Copilot

Bingbot indexes content for Bing Search and powers Copilot's answers.

Advertising

AdIdxBot crawls ads and landing pages for quality assurance.

Previews

BingPreview / MicrosoftPreview generate snapshot images and cards.

Verify authenticity. UA strings can be spoofed. Microsoft provides a Verify Bingbot tool — and reverse DNS should resolve to search.msn.com.

Control Bing AI's access

robots.txt

You control each agent independently. Common configurations below.

Default: allow BingbotRecommended

Keep search + Copilot visibility.

# Allow Bing Search and Copilot User-agent: bingbot Allow: / User-agent: adidxbot Allow: /

Block all Bing crawlersRestrictive

Removes you from Bing Search AND Copilot answers.

# Block every Bing crawler User-agent: bingbot Disallow: / User-agent: adidxbot Disallow: / User-agent: MicrosoftPreview Disallow: /

Allow public paths only

Selective crawling — protect private areas.

# Public-only crawling User-agent: bingbot Allow: /public/ Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /members-only/

Optimize content for Bing AI.

Bingbot feeds Copilot. Optimizing for Bing is optimizing for Microsoft's AI.

Clean semantic HTML. Proper headings, lists, and schema markup so the crawler can extract answerable chunks.

Core Web Vitals. Bing uses page experience signals — slow sites get fewer chances in Copilot.

Verify in Bing Webmaster Tools. Submit sitemaps, monitor indexing errors, adjust crawl rate.

Structured data. Article, FAQPage, and HowTo schemas are heavily weighted.

Throttle if needed. Use the Crawl Control tool in Bing Webmaster Tools for per-hour rate limits.

Track Bing AI visits with xSeek.

See every Bing + Copilot visit.

Track Bingbot, AdIdxBot, and preview crawlers. See which pages feed Copilot's answers and how Microsoft surfaces your content.

Start free →

Frequently asked questions

Bingbot is Microsoft's primary crawler. It feeds both Bing Search and Copilot, so its access directly controls how your content appears in Microsoft's AI answers.

Source: Microsoft's official Bing crawlers documentation.

PreviousMistral user agents NextLlama user agents