Overview
Bingbot is Microsoft's web crawler that discovers and indexes pages for Bing search results. It reads OG tags as supplementary metadata to enrich search results — particularly for images and social previews within Bing's search interface.
Bingbot is the second most important search engine crawler after Googlebot. It also powers search results for several other services, including Yahoo Search, DuckDuckGo (partially), and Microsoft's Copilot AI. Optimizing for bingbot has broader reach than just Bing.
The crawler supports modern web standards including JavaScript rendering. It respects robots.txt, crawl-delay directives, and provides tools through Bing Webmaster Tools for controlling crawl behavior.
User-Agent Strings
Bingbot identifies itself with the following user-agent strings:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +https://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; bingbot/2.0; +https://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36How Bingbot Handles OG Images
Bingbot reads OG tags to enrich search result snippets and for content understanding. It's primarily a search indexer, not a link preview bot.
Meta Tags Read
og:imageog:titleog:descriptionog:urlog:typeog:site_name| Preferred Size | 1200 × 630 |
| Cache Duration | Days to weeks, varies by site |
Caching Behavior
Tied to Bing's crawl schedule. Crawl frequency depends on site authority and content freshness. Use Bing Webmaster Tools to request re-crawling.
Fallback Behavior
Bingbot extracts metadata from multiple sources including OG tags, HTML meta description, structured data, and page content. OG tags are one input among many.
Things to Know
- Bingbot supports the crawl-delay robots.txt directive, unlike Googlebot which ignores it.
- Bing Webmaster Tools lets you configure maximum crawl rate to protect server resources.
- Bingbot renders JavaScript, but JavaScript-dependent OG tags may be missed on initial crawl.
- Microsoft's Copilot AI uses bingbot-crawled data — blocking bingbot also affects Copilot results.
robots.txt
Fully respects robots.txt including the crawl-delay directive. Bing Webmaster Tools also provides crawl rate controls.
User-agent: bingbot
Allow: /
Crawl-delay: 1How to Test
Bing provides Webmaster Tools with a URL Inspection feature. You can submit URLs for re-crawling and check how Bing sees your page's metadata.
- Use the URL Inspection tool to see how Bing reads your OG tags.
- Submit your sitemap through Bing Webmaster Tools to improve crawl coverage.
- If bingbot is consuming too many server resources, use the crawl-delay directive or Bing's crawl control settings.
You can also use the MyOG OG Preview tool to check how your OG tags are configured before testing with Bingbot.
FAQ
What is bingbot?
Bingbot is Microsoft's web crawler that discovers and indexes web pages for Bing search results. It reads page content, meta tags (including Open Graph tags), and structured data to build search index entries.
Does bingbot power other search engines?
Yes. Bingbot's index is used by several services beyond Bing, including Yahoo Search, DuckDuckGo (partially), and Microsoft Copilot AI. Blocking bingbot affects visibility across all these platforms.
How do I control bingbot's crawl rate?
You can use the crawl-delay directive in robots.txt (e.g., Crawl-delay: 1 for 1 second between requests), or configure crawl rate limits in Bing Webmaster Tools under Site Configuration > Crawl Control.
Related Bots
Test Your OG Images
Check how your Open Graph images appear to bots and crawlers. Preview your link cards before sharing.
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