Microsoft Preview
What is Microsoft Preview?
About
Microsoft Preview is a fetcher operated by Microsoft. It's not currently known to be artificially intelligent or AI-related. If you think that's incorrect or can provide more detail about its purpose, please contact us. You can see how often Microsoft Preview visits your website by setting up Dark Visitors agent analytics.
Detail
| Operator | Microsoft |
Type
Expected Behavior
Fetchers visit websites on-demand. They're normally dispatched by apps to present metadata about a link (e.g. the title and thumbnail image) to a user.
Agent Analytics
Visits to Your Website
Half of your traffic probably comes from artificial agents, and there are more of them every day. Track their activity with agent analytics.
Top Websites
Robots.txt
Should I Block Microsoft Preview?
Probably not. If you block a fetcher, it won't be able to fetch the metadata it needs to display a link preview. Fewer people will click on the link to your website without this.
How Do I Block Microsoft Preview?
You can block Microsoft Preview or limit its access by setting user agent token rules in your website's robots.txt. Set up Dark Visitors agent analytics to check whether it's actually following them.
| User Agent Token | Description |
|---|---|
Microsoft Preview |
Should match instances of Microsoft Preview |
# robots.txt
# This should block Microsoft Preview
User-agent: Microsoft Preview
Disallow: /
Recommended Solution
Instead of doing this manually, use automatic robots.txt to keep your rules updated with the latest AI scrapers, crawlers, and assistants automatically.
Global Bot & LLM Traffic
Fetchers
The overall volume of internet traffic coming from Fetchers
See Global Bot & LLM Traffic →