Overview
BingVideoPreview is Microsoft’s documented crawler for providing previews of videos in Bing.
Microsoft documents desktop and mobile variants of BingVideoPreview/1.0. As with other User-Agent identities, the string can be spoofed and should be corroborated when origin matters.
Identity
- User-Agent Pattern
-
BingVideoPreview - Aliases
- bingvideopreview; Bing video preview bot
- HTTP Agent Examples
-
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; BingVideoPreview/1.0; +https://aka.ms/microsoftbots) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36 - Robots Token
- BingVideoPreview
- Identity Type
- Officially documented
- Evidence Method
- Verify BingVideoPreview by matching `BingVideoPreview` to Microsoft evidence, then checking reverse DNS, source-network ownership, signed request data, or published crawler documentation when available.
Classification
- Type
- Preview
- Kind
- Preview
- Family
- Bing
- Purpose
- Video preview
Behavior and handling
- Common Use
- Generating previews of videos in Bing.
- Detection Notes
- BingVideoPreview traffic is primarily detected by the `BingVideoPreview` user-agent pattern; related patterns include `bingvideopreview; Bing video preview bot`. Compare source IPs, reverse DNS, request paths, and crawl cadence with Microsoft infrastructure before trusting the traffic.
- Respects robots.txt
- Yes
- Spoofing Risk
- BingVideoPreview has medium spoofing risk because the user-agent can be copied, even when the bot has strong source or documentation support.
- Risk
- Neutral
- Recommended Handling
- Depends
Rules and controls
- Robots.txt Snippet
-
User-agent: BingVideoPreview Disallow: /
Relationships
- Operator
- Microsoft Checked 2026-08-07
Relationships without an Evidence link are normalized from the canonical directory record. They should not be interpreted as independent proof of physical presence or request origin.