# Bingbot vs GoogleOther

Bingbot and GoogleOther compared on 14 documented fields, from 20 claims, last verified 2026-09-15.

| Field | Bingbot | GoogleOther | Comparison |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | yes | not documented | different |
| follows_noarchive | yes | not documented | different |
| honours_crawl_delay | yes | no | different |
| observed_fetches_robots_txt | not documented | no | different |
| observed_requested_mcp_endpoint | not documented | yes | different |
| opt_out_mechanism | yes | not documented | different |
| publishes_ip_list | yes | yes | same |
| purpose_documented | yes | mixed | different |
| reads_llms_txt | not_documented | not documented | different |
| respects_robots_txt | yes | yes | same |
| robots_txt_token | not documented | GoogleOther | different |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | no | not_documented | different |
| user_agent_string_full | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) | not documented | different |
| verifiable_by_rdns | yes | yes | same |

## Differences

| Field | Bingbot statement | GoogleOther statement |
| --- | --- | --- |
| cites_sources | Copilot Search in Bing delivers clearly cited sources alongside generative answers to support publishers and content owners. | not documented |
| follows_noarchive | Bingbot excludes noarchive-tagged content from Copilot and Chat answers and from generative AI training data. | not documented |
| honours_crawl_delay | Microsoft states that a crawl-delay directive in robots.txt always takes precedence over Bing Webmaster Tools crawl control settings for Bingbot. | Google does not support the robots.txt Crawl-delay directive for GoogleOther. |
| observed_fetches_robots_txt | not documented | GoogleOther made 93 requests to Rattlesnakes By Mail between 2026-09-13T20:00Z and 2026-09-15T09:00Z and fetched /robots.txt on none of those requests. GoogleOther's first request to Rattlesnakes By Mail was the home page at 2026-09-14T12:03:30Z. |
| observed_requested_mcp_endpoint | not documented | GoogleOther requested the /mcp endpoint of Rattlesnakes By Mail twice between 2026-09-13T20:00Z and 2026-09-15T09:00Z, at 2026-09-14T15:07:30Z and at 2026-09-14T18:27:49Z. Rattlesnakes By Mail returned status 405 to both GoogleOther requests for /mcp. |
| opt_out_mechanism | Microsoft lets publishers block Bingbot content from Copilot answers and AI training using noarchive and nocache tags. | not documented |
| purpose_documented | Bingbot serves as Microsoft's standard crawler and handles most of Bing's daily web crawling. | GoogleOther is a generic crawler that Google product teams use to fetch publicly accessible content from sites. |
| reads_llms_txt | Microsoft does not publish whether Bingbot reads llms.txt files. | not documented |
| robots_txt_token | not documented | The robots.txt token for GoogleOther is GoogleOther. |
| separate_search_and_training_tokens | Microsoft controls Bingbot's use in AI training through meta tags rather than publishing a separate training-specific crawler token. | Google does not document whether content fetched by GoogleOther is used for Gemini training. |
| user_agent_string_full | Bingbot sends a user agent string containing bingbot/2.0 and a link to Microsoft's bingbot.htm page. | not documented |

## Sources

- https://blogs.bing.com/search/April-2025/Introducing-Copilot-Search-in-Bing
- https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/verifying-googlebot
- https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/07/a-note-on-unsupported-rules-in-robotstxt
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers
- https://developers.google.com/static/crawling/ipranges/common-crawlers.json
- https://rattlesnakesbymail.com/observed/googleother
- https://www.bing.com/toolbox/bingbot.json
- https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/ai-performance-9f8e7d6c
- https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/crawl-control-55a30303
- https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/how-to-verify-bingbot-3905dc26
- https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/robots-meta-tags-and-attributes-that-bing-supports-5198d240
- https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/which-crawlers-does-bing-use-8c184ec0