What is Bingbot?
Bingbot is a web crawler used by Microsoft to gather information to build a searchable index of the web. It powers the Bing search engine, performing the same tasks as Googlebot does for Google.
History and Activity
Bingbot was launched in October 2010. According to Cloudflare Radar, Bingbot is the 3rd most active crawler in the world, with AhrefsBot ranked 4th.
User Agent Strings
Bingbot uses several user agent strings to identify itself while crawling websites. The primary user agent strings for Bingbot are:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)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/537.36Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)
Respecting Web Directives
Like any other good search bot, Bingbot respects the rules specified in the robots.txt file as well as “nofollow” directives on links and pages. This means you can control Bingbot's access to your site’s content through standard web protocols.
Other Bing Crawlers
Apart from Bingbot, Bing also operates other crawlers for different purposes:
- AdIdxBot: Used for Bing Ads.
- BingPreview: Used to generate page snapshots for preview purposes.
By understanding Bingbot and its behavior, webmasters can optimize their websites to ensure they are indexed correctly by the Bing search engine, potentially improving their search rankings and visibility.
For more information on Bingbot and how to optimize your website for Bing, visit the official Bing Webmaster Tools page.
