Who operates MicrosoftPreview?

MicrosoftPreview is a link preview bot; its operator is identified in its user-agent string and public documentation.

Does MicrosoftPreview respect robots.txt?

Yes. MicrosoftPreview generally follows robots.txt directives, so you can allow or disallow it with a rule for its user agent.

MicrosoftPreview - What It Is & How to Handle It

Q: Should I block MicrosoftPreview?

Usually no, allowing it lets your shared links render rich previews. Block it only if you do not want preview cards for your pages.

What is MicrosoftPreview?

MicrosoftPreview is a link preview bot. MicrosoftPreview generates page snapshots for Microsoft products. It has desktop and mobile variants, with Chrome version dynamically updated to match the latest Microsoft Edge version.

MicrosoftPreview controls how your links look when they are shared. Rich previews drive clicks across social and messaging platforms, and clean preview metadata also helps AI systems parse your pages. Allowing it keeps your content looking polished wherever it appears.

Like any automated client, MicrosoftPreview consumes crawl budget and appears in your server and CDN logs. Reviewing those logs alongside your robots.txt rules helps you keep automated traffic deliberate and easy to reason about.

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How to handle MicrosoftPreview

You will usually want MicrosoftPreview allowed so shared links render rich previews. Block it only if you do not want preview cards generated for your pages.

To control MicrosoftPreview, add a rule for its user agent to your robots.txt:

User-agent: MicrosoftPreview
Disallow: /

MicrosoftPreview generally honors robots.txt directives.

Examples

When a user shares a link, MicrosoftPreview fetches the page's Open Graph tags to build a rich preview card.
A team adds Open Graph and image metadata so MicrosoftPreview renders an attractive preview for shared URLs.