What is MSN?
MSN is a search engine crawler operated by Microsoft. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Microsoft |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
| Insights Last Updated | August 1, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
MSN crawls on a schedule set by algorithms, not a calendar. Expect visit frequency to track your site's popularity, how often your content changes, and your domain authority. It throttles itself to avoid loading your server and follows crawl rules better than almost any other category of bot.
MSN's User Agent
| User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.0; Trident/4.0; FBSMTWB; .NET CLR 2.0.34861; .NET CLR 3.0.3746.3218; .NET CLR 3.5.33652; msn OptimizedIE8;ENUS) |
How To Block MSN With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block MSN from accessing your entire website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all search engine crawlers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: MSN # https://knownagents.com/agents/msn
Disallow: /Global Insights for MSN
As of August 1, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the world's top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocking Trend
0% of top websites block MSN in their robots.txt files.
Overall Search Engine Crawler Traffic
14.8% of all web traffic came from search engine crawlers.
Top Visited Website Categories
The types of websites most frequently visited by MSN.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block MSN?
No, unless you want your pages out of search results. MSN feeds a search engine index, and blocking it erases your visibility and organic traffic from that engine. This is the one category almost every website should allow. Almost none of the top websites we track have robots.txt rules for MSN right now.
Does MSN Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Yes. MSN is expected to follow robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the right first move. Automatic Robots.txt adds and maintains that rule for you, and Agent Analytics confirms MSN actually follows it.
Does MSN Access Private Content?
No. MSN indexes public pages only and does not sign in anywhere. Watch for accidentally public content though, because anything reachable without a login can end up in search results.
Why Is MSN Visiting My Website?
MSN is keeping its search index current. Links, sitemaps, or direct submission brought it to your site, and it comes back at a rate tuned to how often your content changes and how popular your site is.
How Can I Tell if MSN Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks MSN visits in real time alongside every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user agent string contains "MSN". Look for steady recurring visits spread across your site. Keep in mind that MSN doesn't publish a verification method, so any client can claim its user agent string and a log match is a hint rather than proof.