What is msnbot-media?
msnbot-media is a web crawler operated by Microsoft that specifically focuses on indexing media content for MSN Search. This bot discovers and collects images, videos, and multimedia files as part of Microsoft's search engine services. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when msnbot-media visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Microsoft |
| Source | Official Website |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
| Insights Last Updated | September 15, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
msnbot-media follows an algorithmic schedule shaped by your site's popularity, update cadence, and domain authority. It generally spreads requests across recurring crawl passes, throttles itself to limit server load, and respects crawl rules more reliably than most other bots.
msnbot-media's User Agent
| User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/534+ (KHTML, like Gecko) MsnBot-Media /1.0b |
How To Block msnbot-media With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block msnbot-media from accessing your 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: msnbot-media # https://knownagents.com/agents/msnbot-media
Disallow: /Insights for msnbot-media
As of September 15, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocking Trend
6% of top websites block msnbot-media in their robots.txts.
Overall Search Engine Crawler Traffic
15.2% of all web traffic came from search engine crawlers.
Top Visited Website Categories
The types of websites most frequently visited by msnbot-media.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block msnbot-media?
No, unless you want to remove your pages from that search engine. msnbot-media supplies its index, so blocking it can eliminate your visibility and organic traffic there. Nearly every website should allow this category. For context, 6% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for msnbot-media.
Does msnbot-media Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Yes. msnbot-media is expected to follow robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the appropriate first step. Automatic Robots.txt can add and maintain that rule, while Agent Analytics lets you verify whether msnbot-media respects it.
Does msnbot-media Access Private Content?
No special access. msnbot-media can reach only content available to anonymous visitors and does not sign in. Make sure sensitive content is not public by mistake.
How Can I Tell if msnbot-media Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks msnbot-media visits in real time. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "msnbot-media". Look for recurring passes that revisit changed pages and discover new ones. Because msnbot-media does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.
Why Is msnbot-media Visiting My Website?
msnbot-media is adding new or changed pages to its search index. It may have discovered your site through links, a sitemap, or direct submission.