Msnbot was a web-crawling robot (type of

internet bot An Internet bot, web robot, robot or simply bot, is a software application that runs automated tasks ( scripts) over the Internet, usually with the intent to imitate human activity on the Internet, such as messaging, on a large scale. An Internet ...

), deployed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washingt ...

to collect documents from the web to build a searchable index for the MSN Search engine. It went into beta in 2004, and had full public release in 2005. The month of October 2010 saw the official retirement of msnbot from most active web crawling duties and its replacement by bingbot. As of September 2015, msnbot was still active from the

and the

Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a variet ...

webmaster help & howto documentation still indicated that msnbot was active (but that it would retire soon). The verification tool for bingbot"Verify Bingbot"
Microsoft, 21/Mar/2014 previously did not recognise msnbot IP addresses. A test executed on 2016-02-22 resulted in a yes: "Verdict for IP address 157.55.39.150: Yes - this IP address is a verified Bingbot IP address. Name: msnbot-157-55-39-150.search.msn.com."

References

Internet bots Web crawlers Microsoft {{web-stub