Bingbot, the Sequel

Early this month, in the Bingbot is Coming to Town blog post, we provided details about the impending change from msnbot to bingbot.  It’s almost October 1st, so we thought we’d send out a quick reminder that this change is still in the works.

Taking into account webmaster feedback, we have modified our rollout schedule a bit. Instead of doing an 100% switch on day one, we will do a staged rollout.  What does that mean to you?  To start, you will continue to see traffic mostly from msnbot. Then, over the next few weeks, you may start to see bingbot traffic.  This transition period is designed to provide time for us to validate consistency, and provide you time to catch and fix potential issues with our new crawler.  At the end of this transition period, bingbot will replace most of the msnbot traffic. It is important to note that during this transition you should not experience a significant increase of the total crawl traffic from msnbot and bingbot for any extended period of time.

If you have not read the previous blog post, I encourage you to do so, as it provides details about what you should and should not do to prepare for this change.

As always, we’d love to hear what you think about this, so please use the forum or replies to this blog if you have feedback or comment.

Fabrice Canel –

Senior Program Manager, Bing