Safe Search Engines

Bingbot

Operated by Microsoft

Quick Facts

User-Agent:
bingbot
Category:
Search Engines
Operator:
Microsoft
Safety:
Safe
Blocking Impact:
Critical - Blocking removes you from search results
SEO Impact Score:
10/10
Official docs:
www.bing.com

What is Bingbot?

Bingbot is the standard web crawler for Microsoft's Bing search engine. It allows your website to appear in Bing search results and powers search experiences across the Microsoft ecosystem.

Bingbot is the standard web crawler for Microsoft's Bing search engine. It allows your website to appear in Bing search results and powers search experiences across the Microsoft ecosystem. Bingbot is a production-grade search engine crawler operated by Microsoft. It uses a distributed crawl infrastructure that respects crawl-delay directives, follows RFC 9309 (robots.txt) spec, and processes Sitemaps to prioritise fresh content. The user-agent string bingbot must be whitelisted if your site uses rate-limiting or WAF rules. Blocking impact is Critical - Blocking removes you from search results.

What happens if you block Bingbot?

⛔ **Critical Impact** - Blocking Bingbot will stop Microsoft from crawling and indexing your pages. Within days or weeks you may see pages drop out of Microsoft's search index entirely, resulting in a significant loss of organic search traffic. This is the most severe possible SEO consequence. Only do this intentionally, for example if you are migrating to a different search engine or decommissioning a domain. If you accidentally blocked Bingbot, remove the rule immediately and request re-indexing via Microsoft's webmaster tools.
Never block - it will remove your site from major search results.

How to block Bingbot with robots.txt

<code>User-agent: bingbot</code> - Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately.

Block completely (robots.txt)
User-agent: bingbot Disallow: /
Allow all (robots.txt)
User-agent: bingbot Allow: /
Block private only (robots.txt)
User-agent: bingbot Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /api/ Disallow: /admin/ Allow: /
Nginx server block
# Nginx: Hard-block Bingbot if ($http_user_agent ~* "bingbot") { return 403 "Bot blocked"; }
Apache .htaccess
# Apache: Hard-block Bingbot SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "bingbot" bad_bot Order Allow,Deny Allow from all Deny from env=bad_bot
Meta robots tag
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">
X-Robots-Tag header
X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow

Is Bingbot safe to allow?

Yes, Bingbot is a **safe and legitimate** crawler. It is operated by Microsoft, which publicly documents its crawler at an official URL and follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309). The user-agent string bingbot is verifiable via reverse-DNS lookup on the crawling IP addresses. You can safely allow it unless you have a specific reason to block (e.g., AI training opt-out or SEO tool visibility).
Verify by reverse-DNS lookup: legitimate Bingbot requests resolve to microsoft's domain.

What does Bingbot do?

Understanding Bingbot's purpose helps you decide whether to allow or block it.

  • Crawls and indexes web pages for search results
  • Discovers new and updated content on your website
  • Analyzes page structure, content, and links for ranking
  • Renders JavaScript to understand dynamic content
  • Checks for mobile-friendliness and page speed

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the official user-agent string for Bingbot?
The official user-agent string for Bingbot is: bingbot. This is the exact string you must use in robots.txt, Nginx, Apache, or Cloudflare firewall rules to target this bot. User-agent matching in robots.txt is case-insensitive, but the string must be spelled correctly. You can verify that a request genuinely comes from Bingbot by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP - legitimate bots resolve back to their operator's domain.
Is Bingbot safe?
Yes, Bingbot is a **safe and legitimate** crawler. It is operated by Microsoft, which publicly documents its crawler at an official URL and follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309). The user-agent string bingbot is verifiable via reverse-DNS lookup on the crawling IP addresses. You can safely allow it unless you have a specific reason to block (e.g., AI training opt-out or SEO tool visibility).
Will blocking Bingbot hurt my SEO?
⛔ **Critical Impact** - Blocking Bingbot will stop Microsoft from crawling and indexing your pages. Within days or weeks you may see pages drop out of Microsoft's search index entirely, resulting in a significant loss of organic search traffic. This is the most severe possible SEO consequence. Only do this intentionally, for example if you are migrating to a different search engine or decommissioning a domain. If you accidentally blocked Bingbot, remove the rule immediately and request re-indexing via Microsoft's webmaster tools.
How do I block Bingbot in robots.txt?
Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file: 
User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /
This instructs Bingbot not to crawl any path on your site. The Disallow: / directive covers the entire domain including subfolders. To only block specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g., Disallow: /blog/). Note: robots.txt is publicly readable - any bot or human can inspect it at yourdomain.com/robots.txt.
Does Bingbot respect robots.txt?
Yes - Bingbot is a well-behaved bot operated by Microsoft. It fetches and parses /robots.txt before crawling any page, following RFC 9309.
How do I verify if Bingbot is crawling my site?
Search your web server access logs for the string bingbot (case-insensitive grep: grep -i "bingbot" /var/log/nginx/access.log). You can also check Google Search Console → Coverage → Crawl Stats for Googlebot variants. For Bingbot specifically, filter by user-agent in your log analysis tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).
What is the crawl frequency of Bingbot?
Critical-impact search crawlers like Bingbot typically crawl popular pages daily and less popular pages weekly. You can manage crawl rate via the crawl-delay directive or via the search console.
Can I block Bingbot from specific pages only?
Yes. Instead of a global Disallow: / you can restrict Bingbot to specific paths: 
User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /staging/
Allow: /
This allows Bingbot everywhere except the listed paths. Path matching in robots.txt uses prefix matching - Disallow: /private/ blocks /private/page.html but NOT /public/private/.
How do I check if Bingbot is blocked by my robots.txt?
Use Google's robots.txt Tester in Search Console, or a third-party checker to simulate a Bingbot request. You can also manually check by opening https://aicrawlercheck.com/robots.txt and scanning for bingbot entries. If a block exists, immediately test it against your most important URLs using the Google Search Console URL Inspection tool.
My site is blocked by Bingbot in Search Console - what do I do?
1. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for any User-agent: bingbot or User-agent: * Disallow rules covering your key pages. 2. Remove or restrict the blocking rules. 3. Validate via Google Search Console → robots.txt Tester. 4. Request re-indexing using the URL Inspection tool. 5. Wait 1-2 weeks for re-crawl. Monitor Coverage report for recovery.

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