BingVideoPreview
Microsoft Bing operates BingVideoPreview, a crawler that, in Microsoft's words, provides previews of videos only in Bing, with desktop and mobile variants. Microsoft documents no robots.txt token and no robots.txt compliance for it, and no verification method specific to this crawler; only Bing's generic guidance exists, covering the Verify Bingbot tool, reverse DNS to search.msn.com and bingbot.json.
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; BingVideoPreview/1.0; +https://aka.ms/microsoftbots) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36What BingVideoPreview does
In logs the crawler appears with BingVideoPreview/1.0 and a link to https://aka.ms/microsoftbots, which redirects (301) to Bing's crawlers help article. Microsoft lists three user-agent strings. One begins with Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 and ends with Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36; a second omits the AppleWebKit and Chrome parts and ends with W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36. The third carries Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P and Mobile Safari/537.36. Microsoft says the crawler has desktop and mobile variants, and that it exists to provide previews of videos only in Bing.
Microsoft's stated purpose is narrow. The crawler exists to provide previews of videos only in Bing, so allowing it lets Bing show previews for videos on your pages, and blocking it removes those previews without any other stated effect. Microsoft does not document a robots.txt token for BingVideoPreview and does not state whether the crawler follows robots.txt, so a site owner who wants to block it has no documented robots.txt rule to use.
Verification is generic. Microsoft's help article gives no method specific to BingVideoPreview. The page-wide guidance for all Bing crawlers covers the Verify Bingbot tool, reverse DNS resolving to search.msn.com, and the bingbot.json IP file. Microsoft does not state whether those checks cover BingVideoPreview traffic, and it gives no reverse-DNS suffix or IP range file specific to this crawler, so a site owner has the user-agent strings plus the generic Bing checks to work from.
Operator note. BingVideoPreview is listed in Microsoft's official crawlers table. Other user agent variants are Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; BingVideoPreview/1.0; +https://aka.ms/microsoftbots) W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36 and Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; BingVideoPreview/1.0; +https://aka.ms/microsoftbots). The https://aka.ms/microsoftbots link in the user agent redirects to the Bing crawlers help article.
Controlling BingVideoPreview with robots.txt
Use the token undocumented in robots.txt. Microsoft Bing's documentation does not state whether this bot honors robots.txt.
User-agent: undocumented
Disallow: /User-agent: undocumented
Allow: /Verifying a request is really BingVideoPreview
Anyone can put BingVideoPreview/1.0 in a User-Agent header. Microsoft does not document a verification method specific to BingVideoPreview. The generic guidance for all Bing crawlers applies: use the Verify Bingbot tool, check that reverse DNS resolves to a hostname under search.msn.com, or match the IP against the published list at https://www.bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json.
Common questions
Should I block BingVideoPreview?
Microsoft says the crawler only provides previews of videos in Bing. Blocking it removes those video previews for your pages and has no other stated effect. Microsoft documents no robots.txt token for it, so a robots.txt rule is not a documented way to block this crawler.
Does BingVideoPreview obey robots.txt?
The operator's documentation does not say. Bing's crawlers help article lists BingVideoPreview with its user-agent strings and purpose but gives no robots.txt token and makes no statement about robots.txt compliance for this crawler.
How do I verify BingVideoPreview?
Microsoft documents no verification method specific to BingVideoPreview. The help article's generic guidance for all Bing crawlers points to the Verify Bingbot tool, reverse DNS to search.msn.com, and the bingbot.json IP file. Microsoft does not state whether those cover BingVideoPreview traffic.
Sources
Every fact on this page was checked against Microsoft Bing's own documentation, listed below, and re-checked by a second reviewer before publication. Reviewed September 2026.
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