A

Discovery

HIGH

Bingbot allowed

robots.txt permits Bingbot (the crawler behind Microsoft Copilot Shopping's index) at the site root. Microsoft Copilot Shopping ranks results from the Bing index; blocking Bingbot removes you from Copilot answers.

What this check looks for

Microsoft Copilot Shopping reads from the Bing index, which is built exclusively by Bingbot — there is no separate Copilot crawler today. A robots.txt Disallow against Bingbot (explicit or via an inheriting wildcard group) keeps the store out of Bing's index and, by extension, out of Copilot's shopping answers.

Which AI surfaces it affects

  • Microsoft Copilot100
  • ChatGPT (ACP)0
  • Google AI Mode (UCP)0
  • Perplexity0
  • Meta AI0

Weighted against the live specs — ACP 2026-04-17, UCP 2026-04-08.

How to fix it

Allow Bingbot in robots.txt

Shopify

A few minutes
  1. Online Store → Themes → Edit code → templates/robots.txt.liquid.
  2. Add a `User-agent: Bingbot` group with `Allow: /`.

Platform docs ↗

BigCommerce

A few minutes
  1. Storefront → SEO → robots.txt.
  2. Add a `User-agent: Bingbot` group with `Allow: /`.

WooCommerce

A few minutes
  1. Yoast SEO → Tools → File editor → robots.txt (or All in One SEO → Robots.txt Editor).
  2. Add a `User-agent: Bingbot` group with `Allow: /`.

Custom / headless

A few minutes
  1. Edit robots.txt to add an explicit Bingbot group with Allow: /.
User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /

The spec it's pinned to

  • RFC 9309 — Bingbot User-agent groups

    Microsoft has not published a dedicated Copilot Shopping crawler. The Copilot answer surface draws from the Bing search index, which is built by Bingbot. Per RFC 9309, blocking Bingbot in robots.txt removes the store from Bing's index — and therefore from Copilot Shopping.

Bing crawlers

Does your store pass this check?

Run the full audit — 82 checks across five AI shopping surfaces. Most tools only check whether you get mentioned; we check whether an agent can buy from you.

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