- Run by
- Microsoft
- Type
- AI assistant fetcher
- Visits
- On its own schedule
- robots.txt
- Follows robots.txt
- Documentation
- Microsoft's page
What Microsoft Copilot does
Microsoft Copilot grounds its answers in Bing search and cites web pages. Microsoft documents no Copilot crawler of its own and no robots.txt name for it: the pages Copilot cites come from the Bing index that Bingbot builds.
- Bing Webmaster Tools shows how often your pages are cited in Copilot. Source
- NOARCHIVE and NOCACHE leave the page in normal Bing search results. Source
Does Microsoft Copilot follow robots.txt?
Through Bingbot. Bing says it respects the preferences content owners express in robots.txt, and Copilot's citations come from Bing's index.
How to stop Microsoft Copilot
There is no Copilot name to block. Add a NOARCHIVE meta tag to keep a page out of Copilot's answers while it stays in Bing search, or NOCACHE to limit what Copilot shows to the URL, title and snippet. A Disallow for bingbot removes the page from Bing search too.
What blocking Microsoft Copilot changes
NOARCHIVE keeps a page out of Copilot's answers. Blocking bingbot also removes your site from Bing search and from the results DuckDuckGo and Yahoo take from it.
Where to see Microsoft Copilot visits
Most bots never appear in Google Analytics. Many don't run JavaScript, so the analytics tag never loads, and Google Analytics 4 automatically excludes traffic from known bots and spiders. Your server or CDN logs record every request with its user agent, so search them for the bot's name.
OneLence AI visibility shows which pages AI crawlers read and fetch for answers, next to the visitors AI assistants send you and the ones that convert.
Other bots from Microsoft
- Bingbot: Bingbot builds Bing's search index, which also feeds Microsoft Copilot's citations, DuckDuckGo and much of Yahoo. It follows robots.txt and Crawl-delay.
- msnbot: msnbot was the crawler for MSN Search and Live Search. Bingbot replaced it in 2010, but Bing still applies msnbot rules when robots.txt has no bingbot group.
- AdIdxBot: AdIdxBot is Microsoft Advertising's crawler. It checks ads and the landing pages they link to.
Frequently asked questions
What is Microsoft Copilot?
Microsoft Copilot grounds its answers in Bing search and cites web pages. Microsoft documents no Copilot crawler of its own and no robots.txt name for it: the pages Copilot cites come from the Bing index that Bingbot builds.
Does Microsoft Copilot follow robots.txt?
Through Bingbot. Bing says it respects the preferences content owners express in robots.txt, and Copilot's citations come from Bing's index.
How do I block Microsoft Copilot?
There is no Copilot name to block. Add a NOARCHIVE meta tag to keep a page out of Copilot's answers while it stays in Bing search, or NOCACHE to limit what Copilot shows to the URL, title and snippet. A Disallow for bingbot removes the page from Bing search too.
What happens if I block Microsoft Copilot?
NOARCHIVE keeps a page out of Copilot's answers. Blocking bingbot also removes your site from Bing search and from the results DuckDuckGo and Yahoo take from it.
Why doesn't Microsoft Copilot show up in Google Analytics?
Most bots never appear in Google Analytics. Many don't run JavaScript, so the analytics tag never loads, and Google Analytics 4 automatically excludes traffic from known bots and spiders. Your server or CDN logs record every request with its user agent, so search them for the bot's name.