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AI crawlers · Search crawler · Microsoft

Bingbot

Bingbot is Microsoft's search crawler. Crawls for Bing search, which Microsoft Copilot answers draw on. Keep it allowed. Blocking it removes your pages from that search engine, and from the AI answers built on it.

By Praveen Kumar, Vectura Digital · Checked against Microsoft's documentation on 20 October 2026.

2.8%

of the world's top 1,000 sites block Bingbot

2.4%

of India's top 1,000 sites block Bingbot

From our study of 2,000 sites, 20 October 2026.

Allow or block Bingbot in robots.txt

robots.txt is a plain text file at the top of your site (yoursite.com/robots.txt). Add one of these groups. If Bingbot isn't mentioned at all, it follows your rules for all crawlers.

To allow it

User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /

To block it

User-agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /
Check if your site blocks BingbotMake a full robots.txt

Questions

What is Bingbot?

Bingbot is run by Microsoft. Crawls for Bing search, which Microsoft Copilot answers draw on.

Should I block Bingbot?

Keep it allowed. Blocking it removes your pages from that search engine, and from the AI answers built on it.

How do I block Bingbot?

Add "User-agent: Bingbot" followed by "Disallow: /" to the robots.txt file at the top of your site. To allow it, use "Allow: /" instead, or simply don't mention it.

Other crawlers of this kind: Googlebot. All crawlers.

Source