What MicrosoftPreview does
MicrosoftPreview is one of the crawlers Bing operates; it generates page snapshots for Microsoft products. It runs in both desktop and mobile variants, identified by user agent strings containing "MicrosoftPreview/2.0; +https://aka.ms/MicrosoftPreview". Microsoft says robots.txt files can be configured to tell Bing crawlers how to interact with a site, and Bing Webmaster Tools offers a Crawl Control feature to limit crawl rates by the hour. It is distinct from BingPreview, which generates page snapshots for Bing itself.
How to control MicrosoftPreview
Target MicrosoftPreview in your robots.txt with the MicrosoftPreview token. Rules apply per bot, so you can allow this one while blocking others, or the reverse.
Allow MicrosoftPreview
User-agent: MicrosoftPreview
Allow: /Block MicrosoftPreview
User-agent: MicrosoftPreview
Disallow: /Microsoft notes that user agent strings are easy to spoof and directs site owners to the Verify Bingbot tool at bing.com/webmasters/verifybingbot to confirm a request's IP belongs to a genuine Bing crawler.
How to identify MicrosoftPreview
Temso identifies MicrosoftPreviewtraffic by matching the request's User-Agent header against this pattern. User-agent strings can be spoofed, so treat a match as an indication, not proof.
MicrosoftPreviewMicrosoftPreview FAQ
What is MicrosoftPreview?
MicrosoftPreview is a Bing-operated crawler that generates page snapshots for Microsoft products, with separate desktop and mobile variants. Its user agent strings contain "MicrosoftPreview/2.0; +https://aka.ms/MicrosoftPreview".
How do I block MicrosoftPreview?
Add a robots.txt group with "User-agent: MicrosoftPreview" followed by "Disallow: /"; Microsoft states robots.txt can be configured to control how Bing crawlers interact with your site. If you want to limit rather than block it, Bing Webmaster Tools' Crawl Control lets you set crawl rates by the hour, and the Verify Bingbot tool confirms whether requests really come from Bing.
About Operational Bots
Monitoring, security scanning, link previews, webhooks, and feed fetchers: the utility traffic that keeps integrations and shared links working.
Most of this traffic is service-critical or user-triggered. Webhooks and previews don't follow robots.txt, and blocking them tends to break things you rely on.
