What is Bingbot?
Bingbot is Bing's standard crawler and handles most of its crawling. Bing's guidelines say Bing and Copilot search experiences rely on the same core crawling, indexing and ranking foundation.
There is no separate Copilot crawler in Bing's crawler list, so allowing Bingbot is how your pages become eligible for Copilot answers and citations.
- Robots.txt token:
Bingbot - Purpose: AI search & answers
- Feeds: Bing search and Microsoft Copilot answers
Who runs Bingbot?
Bingbot is run by Microsoft. Everything on this page comes from Microsoft's own documentation: Bing: Which crawlers does Bing use? and Bing Webmaster Guidelines. We last checked it on 21 October 2026.
How to allow Bingbot in robots.txt
Bingbot is allowed unless a rule blocks it. If your * group blocks it, give it its own group:
User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /
Disallow: /admin/A named group replaces your User-agent: * group for Bingbot, so copy in any private folders you still want blocked, like /admin/ above.
How to block Bingbot in robots.txt
User-agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /Your pages stop being crawled for Bing, which also removes them from Copilot answers built on Bing's index.
To block one folder only, list just that path:
User-agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /tmp/Things to know about Bingbot
- Bing's guidelines list blocking Bingbot in robots.txt as something to avoid.
- Bing says robots.txt controls crawling, not indexing: use noindex to keep a URL out of Bing and Copilot, and NOARCHIVE to keep content out of Copilot responses.
- NOCACHE limits Copilot to your URL, title and snippet. You can set Bingbot's crawl rate by the hour with the Crawl control tool in Bing Webmaster Tools.
- robots.txt only grants permission. A CDN or firewall can still block Bingbot even when your rules allow it.
Check every AI crawler at once
The checker above tests Bingbot and every other AI crawler on this list against your live robots.txt. The full AI Crawler Checker explains how to read the results. For help beyond robots.txt, see technical SEO, AI search optimisation and GEO services.
AI search & answers
- OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI): ChatGPT search answers
- Claude-SearchBot (Anthropic): Claude's search results
- PerplexityBot (Perplexity): Perplexity's search results and citations
- Googlebot (Google): Google Search, including AI Overviews and AI Mode
- Applebot (Apple): Siri, Spotlight and Safari search and answers
User-requested fetch
- ChatGPT-User (OpenAI): pages ChatGPT opens when a user asks
- Claude-User (Anthropic): pages Claude opens when a user asks
- Perplexity-User (Perplexity): pages Perplexity opens when a user asks
Model training
- GPTBot (OpenAI): training data for OpenAI's foundation models
- ClaudeBot (Anthropic): training data for Anthropic's models
- Meta-ExternalAgent (Meta): training data for Meta's foundation AI models
- CCBot (Common Crawl): Common Crawl's open web archive, widely used as AI training data
- Amazonbot (Amazon): Amazon products and services, including Amazon AI models
Robots.txt control token
- Google-Extended (Google): Gemini model training and grounding
- Applebot-Extended (Apple): Apple foundation model training
FAQ
Bingbot questions
Bing's crawler list doesn't include one. Its guidelines say Copilot relies on the same crawling and indexing foundation as Bing search, so Bingbot is the one to allow.
Bing says to use noindex to keep a URL out of Bing and Copilot, or NOARCHIVE to stop its content being used in Copilot responses. robots.txt alone controls crawling, not indexing.
Yes. Bing Webmaster Tools has a Crawl control tool that sets crawl rates by the hour.
User agent strings are easy to fake. Bing offers a Verify Bingbot tool to check whether an IP address belongs to its crawler.
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