// Microsoft
msnbot
// Overview
What it is
Microsoft's legacy search crawler, still seen alongside Bingbot. Classified as indexing because it feeds a searchable retrieval index.
In Aiola's taxonomy, Indexing means crawled for ai or search indexing.
// Headers
User agent
Look for the match token inside the complete HTTP User-Agent header. Tokens can be spoofed, so use the network checks below for authentication.
msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)msnbot// Network
Official IP ranges
Microsoft has not published official IP ranges that Aiola successfully fetched for msnbot. Aiola does not list cloud-provider ranges or community guesses as if they authenticated this crawler.
// Verification
Verify authenticity
Start with the source IP recorded by your trusted edge or server, not an untrusted forwarded header.
host REQUEST_IP
# Confirm the hostname ends in an official suffix
host RETURNED_HOSTNAME
# The forward lookup must return REQUEST_IPFor production checks, test against every current prefix in the vendor feed. Re-fetch feeds regularly: a July 2026 snapshot is evidence of publication, not a permanent firewall list.
// Robots.txt
Control it with robots.txt
Microsoft documents crawler controls for this bot family. Robots.txt can direct cooperative crawling, but it cannot prove that a request is authentic.
User-agent: msnbot
Allow: /User-agent: msnbot
Disallow: /// Analytics
Track it
Aiola tracks this crawler on your site — crawls, pages, trends. See when msnbot arrives, which URLs it requests, and how activity changes over time.
// FAQ
FAQ
What is msnbot?
Microsoft's legacy search crawler, still seen alongside Bingbot. Classified as indexing because it feeds a searchable retrieval index.
What user-agent token identifies msnbot?
Match the case-insensitive token “msnbot” in the User-Agent header. A matching header alone does not authenticate the sender.
Can I verify msnbot by IP address?
No official msnbot CIDR snapshot was successfully fetched for this verification date. Do not treat an arbitrary cloud IP as proof of identity.
Can robots.txt block msnbot?
Microsoft documents crawler controls for this bot family. Robots.txt can direct cooperative crawling, but it cannot prove that a request is authentic. Use the specific “msnbot” group when you want a rule for this identity without changing rules for every crawler.
// Related