When you see what appears to be a Bingbot on your server logs, it's possible that you may want to check to see whether it is originating from Bing, and not an imposter that has been allowed access to crawl your site. Bing has addressed the issue, describing the following method to verify the Bingbot:
Use Reverse DNS lookup using the IP address connected to the bot, to see whether its origin ends up at search.msn.comUse Forward DNS lookup using that name to see if it goes back to the same IP address There are several tools you can use to perform these tasks, depending on your system: Whois.net is a web-based lookup service that can forward and reverse DNS and IP lookups. If you're on Windows, you can use nslookup from cmd.exe to perform reverse and forward DNS lookups. If you're on a Linux-based system, you can perform a similar action using the host command.Hardcoded IP addresses or address ranges Make sure you haven't (or more so, your system hasn't) added the IP address of a visiting Bingbot to the hardcoded IP address or address ranges list. This is because Bingbots do not generally share the same IP address, and like all other search engines, IP addresses can change at any time. As such, you might be inadvertently blocking a verified Bingbot from crawling your site. SEO experts will know that doing so could be detrimental to your efforts to rank in the search engine, and therefore affect your site's digital marketing campaign! So if you're getting HTTP 403 Forbidden replies to Bingbot requests, your server may have been configured to grant Bingbot access through a hardcoded list. So, new Bingbots may be denied access as they are coming from a different IP address. Follow these steps, and you'll be able to verify Bingbots are the real deal, and ensure that you're letting the right Bots crawl your site.
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