Bingbot
Bingbot is Microsoft's search crawler, and the Bing index it builds also feeds Microsoft Copilot's web answers. Allowing Bingbot keeps you eligible for both Bing search results and Copilot citations. Bingbot honors robots.txt, and Microsoft also runs IndexNow, which lets you push new and updated URLs to Bing instantly instead of waiting for a recrawl.
Last updated
What does Bingbot do?
- User-agent token
- bingbot
- Operator
- Microsoft
- Feeds
- Bing Search + Microsoft Copilot
- robots.txt
- Unverified
How do you control Bingbot in robots.txt?
Edit the robots.txt file at the root of your domain (for example https://example.com/robots.txt), add one of the groups below, then save and re-deploy.
Remember: a named User-agent: bingbot group overrides your global User-agent: * rules, so repeat any private Disallow paths inside it.
Allow Bingbot (recommended for AI visibility)
# Welcome bingbot, but keep private areas blocked.
# A named user-agent group overrides "User-agent: *", so repeat
# your own private Disallow rules inside this group.
User-agent: bingbot
Allow: /
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /account/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/Block Bingbot
# Block bingbot from the entire site.
User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /FAQ
Does Bingbot power Microsoft Copilot?
Yes. Copilot's web answers draw on Bing's index, so being crawlable by Bingbot is what makes your content eligible to be cited by Copilot.
How do I get Bing to see new pages faster?
Submit them via IndexNow. Bing supports the IndexNow protocol, which notifies it of new or changed URLs immediately rather than waiting for the next crawl.
Is your site visible to AI crawlers?
Run a free technical access audit to inspect published crawler controls and raw HTML delivery. It does not measure whether an engine indexed or cited the site.
Run a free auditPart of the Cite Hustle AI crawler directory. For the full framework on AI search visibility, read the GEO methodology.