NORAD.io
OVERVIEWCOUNTRIESBOTSTHREATS

BINGBOT

LOW RISK🔍 SEARCH & AI CRAWLER

Microsoft Bing's web crawler for search indexing and AI features

ORGANIZATION
Microsoft
FIRST SEEN
2010-01
RESPECTS ROBOTS.TXT
✓ YES
DOCUMENTATION
www.bing.com
—
DAILY VISITS
—
COUNTRIES ACTIVE
TRACKING
STATUS
—
LAST SEEN

📡 BINGBOT USER-AGENT STRING

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)

This is the User-Agent header sent by Bingbot in HTTP requests. Use this to identify Bingbot in your server access logs.

📋 ABOUT BINGBOT

Bingbot is Microsoft's official web crawler for Bing Search, the second-largest search engine globally. Bingbot crawls and indexes web content to power Bing's search results, Microsoft Copilot's web-grounded responses, Yahoo Search (which uses Bing's index), and portions of DuckDuckGo's results.

Bingbot has evolved significantly with Microsoft's investment in AI. Beyond traditional search indexing, Bingbot now feeds data into Microsoft Copilot's real-time web capabilities. The crawler uses a sophisticated rendering engine capable of executing JavaScript, making it one of the more advanced search crawlers alongside Googlebot. Bingbot pioneered the IndexNow protocol, enabling instant URL submission for faster indexing.

NORAD.io monitors Bingbot activity to help site operators optimize their Bing search presence and distinguish legitimate Bingbot traffic from spoofed requests. Bingbot verification through reverse DNS (*.search.msn.com) is a critical security measure that NORAD performs automatically.

🎯 HOW TO DETECT BINGBOT

  • ▸User-Agent contains 'bingbot/2.0'
  • ▸Verify via reverse DNS — should resolve to *.search.msn.com
  • ▸Bing publishes IP ranges at https://www.bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json
  • ▸Supports and encourages IndexNow protocol for instant indexing
  • ▸Also powers Yahoo Search and parts of DuckDuckGo

🌐 BINGBOT KNOWN IP RANGES

157.55.39.0/24207.46.13.0/2440.77.167.0/2413.66.139.0/2413.67.10.16/2852.167.144.0/24

Use these CIDR ranges to verify Bingbot identity at the network level. Always combine with User-Agent verification for accurate detection.

🔄 CRAWL BEHAVIOR

Systematic crawling with adaptive rate control. Renders JavaScript via headless browser. Respects robots.txt and Bing Webmaster Tools settings. Supports IndexNow for instant URL notification. Crawl frequency adjusts based on site freshness signals.

PURPOSE

Indexes web content for Bing Search, Microsoft Copilot, Yahoo Search (powered by Bing), DuckDuckGo (partially), and other Bing-powered search products.

🤖 ROBOTS.TXT CONFIGURATION

User-agent: bingbot
Allow: /
Crawl-delay: 5
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml

Bingbot respects robots.txt directives. Add this to your robots.txt file at the root of your domain.

→ Complete Guide: robots.txt for AI Bots

🗺️ WHERE IS BINGBOT ACTIVE?

🇺🇸
United States
🇨🇦
Canada
🇲🇽
Mexico
🇬🇹
Guatemala
🇨🇺
Cuba
🇭🇹
Haiti
🇩🇴
Dominican Republic
🇭🇳
Honduras
🇳🇮
Nicaragua
🇸🇻
El Salvador
🇨🇷
Costa Rica
🇵🇦
Panama

⚠️ RELATED THREATS

Prompt Injection

Attempts to override bot instructions via malicious content embedded in web pages

Data Exfiltration

Bots attempting to extract sensitive data from websites including PII and credentials

Credential Stuffing

Automated login attempts using leaked credentials from data breaches

Aggressive Content Scraping

Bots aggressively scraping content beyond robots.txt limits and ToS

📂 MORE 🔍 SEARCH & AI CRAWLERS

GPTBotOpenAIClaudeBotAnthropicGooglebotGoogleGoogle-ExtendedGoogleBytespiderByteDanceCCBotCommon Crawl

📚 RELATED GUIDES

How to Detect AI Bots →robots.txt for AI Bots →NORAD API Docs →

PROTECT YOUR WEBSITE

Deploy SiteTrust to monitor and control AI bot access to your site with the Agent Passport Standard.

INSTALL SITETRUST →