What is msnbot?
msnbot is Microsoft's legacy web crawler that indexed web pages for the MSN Search engine, which has since been replaced by Bing's crawling infrastructure, though some references may still appear in logs. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Category
Expected Behavior
msnbot crawls on a schedule set by algorithms, not a calendar. Expect visit frequency to track your site's popularity, how often your content changes, and your domain authority. It throttles itself to avoid loading your server and honors crawl rules better than almost any other category of bot.
Overview
| Operated By | Microsoft |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
| Insights Last Updated | July 7, 2026 |
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocking Trend
As of July 7, 2026, 4% of top websites block msnbot in their robots.txt files.
Overall Search Engine Crawler Traffic
As of July 7, 2026, 7.2% of all web traffic came from search engine crawlers.
Top Visited Website Categories
This data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the world's top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
msnbot's User Agent
| User Agent | msnbot/1.1 ( http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm) |
Access other known user agents and IP addresses using the Enterprise API.
How To Block msnbot
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block msnbot from accessing your entire website. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: msnbot # https://knownagents.com/agents/msnbot
Disallow: /Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block msnbot?
No, unless you want your pages out of search results. msnbot feeds a search engine index, and blocking it erases your visibility and organic traffic from that engine. This is the one category almost every website should allow. For comparison, 4% of the top websites we track already have robots.txt rules for msnbot.
Does msnbot Respect Robots.txt?
Yes. msnbot is expected to honor robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the right first move. Automatic Robots.txt adds and maintains that rule for you, and Agent Analytics confirms msnbot actually honors it.
Does msnbot Access Private Content?
No. msnbot indexes public pages only and does not sign in anywhere. Watch for accidentally public content though, because anything reachable without a login can end up in search results.
Why Is msnbot Visiting My Website?
msnbot is keeping its search index current. Links, sitemaps, or direct submission brought it to your site, and it comes back at a rate tuned to how often your content changes and how popular your site is.
How Can I Tell if msnbot Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks msnbot visits in real time alongside every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user agent string contains "msnbot". Look for steady recurring visits spread across your site. Keep in mind that msnbot doesn't publish a verification method, so any client can claim its user agent string and a log match is a hint rather than proof.