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 11, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
MSN 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 directives more reliably than most other bots.
MSN's User Agent
| User Agent | Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; msn OptimizedIE8;ZHCN) |
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 Statistics for MSN
As of August 11, 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
0% of top websites block MSN in their robots.txt files.
Overall Search Engine Crawler Traffic
15.8% 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 to remove your pages from that search engine. MSN supplies its index, so blocking it can eliminate your visibility and organic traffic there. Nearly every website should allow this category. Almost none of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for MSN.
Does MSN Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Yes. MSN is expected to follow robots.txt directives, 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 MSN respects it.
Does MSN Access Private Content?
No special access. MSN can reach only content available to anonymous visitors and does not sign in. Make sure sensitive content is not public by mistake.
Why Is MSN Visiting My Website?
MSN is adding new or changed pages to its search index. It may have discovered your site through links, a sitemap, or direct submission.
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 recurring passes that revisit changed pages and discover new ones. Because MSN does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.