If you are learning Bing SEO, Bingbot is one of the first technical concepts you should understand. Bingbot is essentially Bing’s automated crawler, also called a web spider or search engine bot.
Its main job is to discover new and updated webpages across the internet. It then sends information about those pages to Bing for processing and potential indexing.
Understanding Bingbot helps SEO beginners understand how websites become discoverable in Bing search results.
What Is Bingbot?
Bingbot is the web crawler used by Microsoft Bing to discover and examine webpages.
Think of Bingbot as a digital visitor that automatically travels from website to website. It accesses webpages, examines their content, and discovers links to other URLs.
Bingbot does not manually browse websites like a human. Instead, it uses automated systems to decide which URLs to visit and when to revisit them.
Microsoft explains that Bingbot discovers new and updated pages and content for Bing’s search index.
For example, imagine you publish this page:
example.com/bing-seo-guide
Bingbot may discover the URL through an internal link, sitemap, or other discovery method. It can then visit the page and send information back to Bing.
What Does Bingbot Actually Do?
Bingbot performs several important activities during the crawling process.
1. Discovers New Webpages
The internet constantly receives new websites, pages, articles, products, and other content.
Bingbot helps Bing discover these new URLs.
It can discover URLs through links and other sources. Bing’s documentation also explains that sitemaps and RSS or Atom feeds can help with URL discovery.
Without crawling, Bing would have difficulty discovering newly published webpages.
2. Finds Updated Content
Bingbot does not only search for completely new webpages.
It also revisits pages that Bing already knows about.
For example, suppose you update an article from:
“Best SEO Tools for Beginners”
You might add new tools, statistics, examples, or information.
When Bingbot returns and detects changes, Bing can process the updated content. Bing says it prioritizes known pages that may have been updated to help keep search results fresh.
3. Helps Bing Build Its Search Index
Crawling and indexing are related, but they are not the same thing.
Bingbot crawls webpages and sends information about what it discovers. Bing then processes those pages and determines whether they should be included in its index.
A simple way to remember this is:
Bingbot crawls → Bing processes → Bing indexes → Bing can potentially rank.
However, crawling does not guarantee indexing or ranking.
4. Discovers Links to Other Pages
Websites are connected through links.
While Bingbot visits one webpage, it can discover links pointing toward other URLs. Those URLs can potentially become additional pages for Bing to discover and process.
This is one reason internal linking is important for SEO.
For example:
Homepage → Blog → SEO Guide → Bing SEO Article
Bingbot can potentially follow this path and discover deeper pages.
How Does Bingbot Decide What to Crawl?
Bingbot cannot crawl every webpage constantly.
The web contains an enormous number of URLs, so Bing uses algorithms to determine what to crawl, how often to crawl it, and how many pages to request from a website.
Bing also aims to minimize the impact of crawling on websites.
For example, a website publishing new content frequently may need different crawling behavior than a small website that rarely changes.
Bing describes this approach as part of its effort to maintain crawl efficiency.
Does Bingbot Crawl Every Page on a Website?
No, you should not assume that every URL will be crawled immediately.
Several factors can affect whether Bingbot can discover or access a page.
These can include:
- Internal linking
- XML sitemaps
- Robots.txt instructions
- Server availability
- HTTP errors
- Website structure
- URL accessibility
- Page changes
- Crawl management settings
Bing Webmaster Tools provides features that help website owners identify crawling problems and understand how Bing sees their websites.
What Is Robots.txt and How Does It Affect Bingbot?
The robots.txt file gives crawlers instructions about which areas they can or cannot crawl.
Bingbot checks robots.txt instructions while crawling websites. It honors applicable directives, including crawl-delay settings.
For example:
User-agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /private/This tells Bingbot not to crawl URLs under the /private/ path.
However, SEO beginners should remember an important distinction:
Blocking crawling is not the same as removing a page from Bing’s index.
For indexing control, Bing also supports directives such as noindex. Bing explains that it needs to crawl a page to see a noindex instruction.
Can Website Owners Control Bingbot?
To some extent, yes.
Bing provides Crawl Control through Bing Webmaster Tools. This feature allows website owners to influence how quickly Bingbot requests pages and resources from their websites.
This can be useful when a website receives heavy traffic during particular hours.
For example, a business could configure crawling to happen more slowly during peak traffic periods.
The goal is to balance:
Search engine accessibility + Website performance
Bingbot vs Crawling vs Indexing vs Ranking
These terms can easily confuse SEO beginners.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Bingbot | Bing’s automated web crawler |
| Crawling | Discovering and accessing webpages |
| Indexing | Processing and storing eligible webpage information |
| Ranking | Ordering relevant indexed pages for search queries |
| SERP | The search results page shown to users |
A simple example makes this easier.
Imagine you publish a new blog post.
Step 1: Bingbot discovers the URL.
Step 2: Bingbot accesses the webpage.
Step 3: Bing processes the information it receives.
Step 4: Bing may add the page to its index.
Step 5: Bing’s ranking systems evaluate it against relevant queries.
Step 6: The page may appear in Bing search results.
This is why crawling is necessary but not sufficient for ranking.
Why Should an SEO Intern Understand Bingbot?
For an SEO intern, understanding Bingbot makes technical SEO much easier.
Suppose your website has 5,000 product pages, but only 3,000 are indexed.
Instead of immediately changing keywords, you should investigate the discovery and crawling process first.
Ask questions such as:
- Can Bingbot discover the missing pages?
- Are important pages linked internally?
- Are they included in the XML sitemap?
- Is robots.txt blocking them?
- Are there server errors?
- Are pages returning the correct HTTP status?
- Does Bing have other crawling or indexing issues?
Bing Webmaster Tools includes tools such as Site Explorer, URL Inspection, Sitemaps, Robots.txt Tester, and Crawl Control to help investigate these issues.
This gives you a much better troubleshooting process than simply assuming, “The page isn’t ranking because the keywords are wrong.”
A Simple Example of Bingbot
Imagine you create a new page:
example.com/bing-seo-for-beginners
You add a link to it from your existing SEO guide.
Bingbot crawls the existing guide and discovers the new URL.
It then accesses the new page and sends information about it to Bing.
Bing processes the page and determines whether it can be included in its index.
Later, when someone searches for a relevant topic, Bing’s ranking systems may consider that page.
So the simplified journey is:
Website → Bingbot → Processing → Index → Ranking → Search Results
Key Takeaway
Bingbot is Bing’s automated crawler responsible for discovering new and updated web content.
It helps Bing find webpages, follow links, identify changes, and provide information for the search index.
As an SEO intern, remember this simple distinction:
Bingbot crawls pages. Bing processes and indexes eligible content. Ranking systems decide where relevant pages may appear.
Once you understand Bingbot, the next important concept is how Bing discovers URLs and decides which pages to crawl. That naturally leads into XML sitemaps, internal links, robots.txt, and IndexNow.