GlossarySEO
What is Bingbot?
Also called: Bing crawler, msnbot
Definition
Bingbot is Microsoft's main web crawler for Bing search. Bing's index also feeds other search products, so letting Bingbot crawl your site matters beyond Bing.com itself.
Bingbot, explained
Bing documents a few crawlers: Bingbot for search, AdIdxBot for ads, and a preview crawler for generating page snapshots. Like Googlebot, Bingbot identifies itself in the user-agent string, reads robots.txt, and can be verified by a reverse DNS lookup; Bing's help says genuine Bing crawler IPs resolve to search.msn.com.
A few details differ from Google. Bing supports the crawl-delay directive in robots.txt, which Google ignores. Bing also backs IndexNow, a protocol that lets you ping search engines the moment a URL changes instead of waiting for a recrawl. And Bing Webmaster Tools gives you crawl, index and keyword data similar to Search Console, including a feature to import your verified sites from Google Search Console.
Founders often ignore Bing because its share of searches is smaller than Google's. But Bing's index is used beyond Bing.com, and some AI assistants use search results as part of how they find sources. Being crawlable and indexed in Bing costs you almost nothing: don't block Bingbot, submit your sitemap once in Bing Webmaster Tools, and consider IndexNow if you publish often.
Check your robots.txt for accidental blocks. Some security plugins and CDN bot rules block unfamiliar crawlers by default, and Bingbot sometimes gets caught. Bing Webmaster Tools' URL inspection will show you whether Bingbot can fetch a page.
Why it matters for founders
It's a second search engine's worth of visibility for a few minutes of setup. For a new product, every extra index your pages appear in is another way to be found.
Example
You verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools by importing it from Search Console, submit your sitemap, and set up IndexNow so new launch pages are pinged to Bing the day they go live.
Common mistakes
- Blocking Bingbot with an overly strict bot rule at the CDN.
- Setting a large
crawl-delaythat slows Bing's crawling of a small site. - Never checking Bing Webmaster Tools for crawl errors.
- Assuming Google-only optimization covers Bing's requirements.
Sources
- Bing Webmaster Tools: Which crawlers does Bing use?
- Bing Webmaster Blog: Import sites from Search Console to Bing Webmaster Tools
- Google Search Central: How Google interprets the robots.txt specification
Checked
Related terms
- Bing Webmaster ToolsBing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft's free console for site owners, the Bing equivalent of Google Search Console. It shows Bing search performance, crawl and index status, and supports sitemaps, URL submission and IndexNow.
- IndexNowIndexNow is an open protocol for telling participating search engines, including Bing, the moment a URL is added, updated or deleted. Google doesn't participate.
- Web crawlerA web crawler is a program that fetches web pages automatically, follows their links to find more pages, and passes what it finds to a search engine or AI system for indexing or analysis.
- User agentA user agent is the software making a web request, identified by the
User-AgentHTTP header. Browsers and crawlers each send their own string, and robots.txt rules target crawlers by their user-agent token.