msnbot
Microsoft · Search indexes · User agent + IP range
About this crawler
Microsoft's retired search crawler, still sent by a few old systems.
Usually means: The page is being discovered or refreshed so it can appear in search or AI search results.
Bing crawls with Bingbot today; msnbot is legacy.
User agent
msnbot
MetricRaven matches this token anywhere in the request's user agent, ignoring case. Operators add version numbers and browser text around it, for example "msnbot/1.0".
IP verification
Verified when the user agent and the IP range both match
1User agent
The request's user agent contains
msnbot.2Request IP
Your server-side tracker sends the IP that made the request.
3Range check
The IP is compared with the ranges Microsoft publishes, refreshed twice a day.
Range sources
Bingbot IP ranges
Control it in robots.txt
User-agent: msnbot Disallow: /private/
Well-behaved crawlers re-read robots.txt within a day or so.
Questions
- What is msnbot?
- Microsoft's retired search crawler, still sent by a few old systems. MetricRaven groups it under Search indexes: search engines and AI search keeping their index fresh.
- How do I verify that a request really comes from msnbot?
- Check both the user agent and the IP. Requests from msnbot contain "msnbot" in the user agent and come from the IP ranges Microsoft publishes (https://www.bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json). A request with the name but another IP is likely spoofed.
- How do I block or allow msnbot?
- Add a robots.txt group for "msnbot" with the paths to allow or disallow. Fetchers that act for a user may ignore robots.txt; block those at your server or firewall instead.
- How can I see when msnbot visits my website?
- Most crawlers never run JavaScript, so browser analytics miss them. MetricRaven's @metricraven/ai-crawl package reports crawler requests from your server, verifies their IPs against published ranges, and shows which pages each crawler reads.
See when AI assistants and crawlers read your site
Add one line to your server and MetricRaven shows which assistants, search engines and training crawlers request your pages, which ones are IP-verified, and the URLs they expected to find, including 404s.