What is Bingbot?

Bingbot is Microsoft’s web crawling bot that discovers and indexes web pages for Bing search engine. It’s the second most important search crawler after Googlebot, powering search results for Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and other search engines.

Why Bingbot Matters

While Google dominates search, Bing still holds significant market share:

  • Desktop users: ~10-15% market share in the US
  • Yahoo search: Powered by Bing
  • DuckDuckGo: Uses Bing’s index
  • Microsoft ecosystem: Default in Windows, Edge browser
  • Enterprise: Popular in corporate environments

How Bingbot Works

Similar to other search crawlers, Bingbot:

  1. Discovers pages through links, sitemaps, and submissions
  2. Crawls content by requesting pages from your server
  3. Processes content including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
  4. Indexes pages for Bing search results
  5. Updates regularly to track content changes

Bingbot Variants

Microsoft uses several specialized crawlers:

  • Bingbot Desktop: Standard desktop crawler
  • Bingbot Mobile: Mobile-optimized crawler
  • BingPreview: Generates page snapshots and previews
  • AdIdxBot: Crawls for Bing Ads quality checks
  • MSNBot: Legacy crawler (mostly replaced by Bingbot)

User Agent Strings

Desktop Bingbot:

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

Mobile Bingbot:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0 Mobile/11A465 Safari/9537.53 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)

BingPreview:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/534+ (KHTML, like Gecko) BingPreview/1.0b

How to Detect Bingbot

1. Check User Agent

Look for “bingbot” in the user agent string - but remember this can be spoofed.

2. Verify with Reverse DNS

The reliable way to verify Bingbot:

host [IP address]
# Should return: msnbot-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx.search.msn.com

host msnbot-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx.search.msn.com
# Should return the original IP

Legitimate Bingbot comes from:

  • search.msn.com
  • Microsoft’s verified IP ranges

3. Check Bing Webmaster Tools

Monitor crawler activity in Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard.

Crawl Frequency and Budget

Bingbot determines crawl frequency based on:

  • Site authority: Higher quality sites get crawled more
  • Update frequency: Fresh content attracts more crawls
  • Server performance: Fast sites can be crawled more
  • Site size: Larger sites get bigger crawl budgets
  • Crawl errors: Errors reduce crawl frequency

Controlling Bingbot

Using robots.txt

# Allow full access
User-agent: bingbot
Allow: /

# Block specific directories
User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/

# Block Bingbot entirely
User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /

Using Meta Tags

<!-- Don't index this page on Bing -->
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">

<!-- Bing-specific directives -->
<meta name="bingbot" content="noarchive">
<meta name="bingbot" content="nosnippet">

Set Crawl Rate

You can’t directly control Bingbot’s crawl rate, but you can:

  • Improve server response times
  • Fix crawl errors
  • Submit sitemaps to prioritize important pages
  • Contact Bing support for crawl rate adjustments

Bing Webmaster Tools

Microsoft’s free tool provides:

Crawl Information:

  • Crawl stats and frequency
  • Crawl errors (404s, server errors)
  • Blocked URLs
  • Sitemaps status

Search Performance:

  • Impressions and clicks
  • Top queries
  • Page rankings
  • Click-through rates

SEO Tools:

  • SEO analyzer
  • Keyword research
  • Backlink reports
  • Site scan

Differences from Googlebot

Crawl Behavior

  • Frequency: Generally crawls less frequently than Googlebot
  • JavaScript: Good JS rendering but may differ from Google
  • Mobile-first: Implemented mobile-first indexing later than Google

Ranking Factors

  • Social signals: Bing considers social media signals more
  • Exact match domains: May weigh exact keyword domains higher
  • Multimedia: Strong emphasis on images and videos
  • Page speed: Important but weighted differently

Indexing Speed

  • Generally slower to discover and index new content
  • Sitemap submission more important for quick indexing

Best Practices for Bingbot

Do:

  • Submit XML sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools
  • Verify site ownership in Webmaster Tools
  • Use clear, descriptive URLs
  • Implement proper schema markup
  • Optimize for mobile devices
  • Include social media integration
  • Create quality content

Don’t:

  • Block CSS/JavaScript files
  • Use cloaking or hidden text
  • Create duplicate content
  • Have slow server response times
  • Ignore Bing Webmaster Tools errors

Common Issues

  1. Slow Indexing

    • Solution: Submit sitemap, improve site speed, build quality backlinks

  2. Crawl Errors

    • Solution: Fix broken links, resolve server errors, check robots.txt

  3. Mobile Issues

    • Solution: Ensure mobile-friendly design, test with Bing’s mobile tester

  4. Blocked Resources

    • Solution: Allow Bingbot to access CSS, JS, and images

Optimizing for Bing

Page Titles

  • Keep under 65 characters
  • Include primary keywords
  • Make unique for each page

Meta Descriptions

  • 150-160 characters
  • Compelling, accurate descriptions
  • Include call-to-action

Schema Markup

Bing strongly supports:

  • Organization schema
  • Product schema
  • Review schema
  • Article schema
  • Local business schema

Social Signals

  • Connect social media accounts in Webmaster Tools
  • Encourage social sharing
  • Monitor social engagement

Multimedia Content

  • Optimize images with alt text
  • Use descriptive file names
  • Include video content
  • Implement video schema

Monitoring Bingbot Activity

Check server logs for:

# Find Bingbot requests
grep -i "bingbot" /var/log/apache2/access.log

# Count requests per day
grep -i "bingbot" access.log | grep "18/Nov/2025" | wc -l

# Most crawled pages
grep -i "bingbot" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20

Track in Bing Webmaster Tools:

  • Crawl stats over time
  • Crawl errors and trends
  • Pages crawled vs indexed
  • Crawl health issues

Performance Impact

Typical Bingbot activity:

  • 100-1000+ requests per day (depending on site size)
  • Lower volume than Googlebot
  • Generally respectful of server resources
  • Adapts to server response times

Bingbot IP Ranges

Bingbot uses various IP ranges from Microsoft:

  • Primarily from 40.77.167.0/24
  • 157.55.39.0/24
  • Other Microsoft Azure ranges

Always verify using reverse DNS rather than just IP ranges.

Should You Optimize for Bing?

Yes, if:

  • You target US/UK markets
  • You have enterprise/business audience
  • You want diversified traffic sources
  • Your competitors ignore Bing (opportunity!)

Lower priority if:

  • You’re purely mobile/app focused
  • Your market has minimal Bing usage
  • Resources are very limited

Future of Bingbot

With Microsoft’s integration of AI (ChatGPT, Copilot):

  • Increased importance of structured data
  • Focus on conversational content
  • Entity-based indexing
  • Real-time information crawling

Bingbot is becoming more sophisticated and important as Microsoft pushes AI-powered search experiences.

Conclusion

While Bingbot may be second to Googlebot in volume, it represents a significant traffic opportunity. The crawler is well-behaved, respects webmaster guidelines, and can drive quality traffic. With less competition for Bing rankings and good tooling in Webmaster Tools, optimizing for Bingbot offers excellent ROI for many websites.

Test Bingbot Access to Your Site

Use our SEO Bot Checker to verify if Bingbot can access your website. This free tool tests robots.txt rules and actual bot access for Bing and other search engines.

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Need to test other bot types? Explore our complete bot testing suite including SEO analytics tools, AI bots, and social media crawlers.