Bing · search
Bingbot: user agent and how to block it
Everything on this page is taken from Bing's own documentation, quoted and linked, and was checked on 4 October 2026. Where the documentation is silent the page says so instead of filling the gap.
What it is
Operator: Bing. Kind, as listed here: search. Bing’s page calls Bingbot its “standard crawler” and does not label a purpose, so we list it as “search” on our own classification, which is not a vendor statement.
“Bingbot is our standard crawler and handles most of our crawling needs each day.”
Source: Bing crawlers, checked 4 October 2026.
User-agent string
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36
This is the first desktop string on Bing’s page, where W.X.Y.Z stands for the Microsoft Edge version Bing is using. Bing lists a second desktop line, “Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)”, then a line break before “W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36”, so we cannot tell from the page where that string ends. It also lists a mobile form.
Source: Bing crawlers. The robots.txt token to match is Bingbot.
Does it obey robots.txt?
“Robots.txt files can be configured to tell Bing crawlers how to interact with your website.”
Source: Bing crawlers, checked 4 October 2026.
Does it affect search?
The Bing page we checked does not say.
Crawl rate
“Bing Webmaster Tools allow you to control crawl rates by the hour using the Crawl control tool.”
Source: Bing crawlers, checked 4 October 2026.
What else Bing says
“But user agent strings are easy to spoof, so not every request with these user agent strings may be coming from a real Bing crawler.”
Source: Bing crawlers, checked 4 October 2026.
robots.txt snippets
Two snippets that show the syntax for this token. They are examples, not advice: whether to allow or refuse Bingbot is your decision, and the effects above are the vendor's description of them.
Allow Bingbot
User-agent: Bingbot Allow: /
Disallow Bingbot
User-agent: Bingbot Disallow: /
How to verify requests
Bing says user agent strings are easy to spoof and points to its Verify Bingbot tool, which checks whether an IP address belongs to Bingbot.
http://www.bing.com/toolbox/verify-bingbot
Source: Bing crawlers.
Questions
What is Bingbot?
Bing describes Bingbot like this: “Bingbot is our standard crawler and handles most of our crawling needs each day.”
Does Bingbot obey robots.txt?
The Bing documentation says: “Robots.txt files can be configured to tell Bing crawlers how to interact with your website.”
How do I block Bingbot in robots.txt?
Add a group to robots.txt with the line “User-agent: Bingbot” followed by “Disallow: /”. That is an example of the syntax, not a recommendation.
Also see the robots.txt tester for AI crawlers and the other entries in the AI crawler reference.
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