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.
Category
| Example User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/534+ (KHTML, like Gecko) MsnBot-Media /1.0b |
| Operated By | Microsoft |
| Source | Official Website |
| Triggered By | Automated crawl |
| Used for AI Model Training | Not expected |
| Affects AI Chat & Search Visibility | Possibly |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
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.
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.
How Do I Block msnbot-media Using 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 October 30, 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 Compliance
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
msnbot-media Traffic
Frequently Asked Questions
What Traffic Patterns Should I Expect From msnbot-media?
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.
Does msnbot-media Follow Robots.txt Rules?
msnbot-media is expected to follow robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the appropriate first step if you want to block it. Automatic Robots.txt can add and maintain that rule, while Agent Analytics lets you verify whether msnbot-media respects it.
Is msnbot-media Used for AI Model Training?
Not ordinarily. msnbot-media is not categorized as an AI training scraper or data provider, so AI model training is not its expected purpose.
Does Blocking msnbot-media Affect AI Search or Citations?
Blocking msnbot-media can remove your pages from the search engine it supplies. That may also affect AI products that rely on the same index, but it does not directly control unrelated AI search services.
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 Verify a Request From msnbot-media?
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.
How Is msnbot-media Different From Other Microsoft Agents?
Microsoft operates separate agents for different purposes, so each agent should be evaluated and controlled independently.
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