Microsoft to start honoring publishers' new AI training and grounding preferences (including the shared robots.txt AI-training signal) from 1 February 2027
“Starting February 1, 2027, Microsoft will honor the new preferences as it crawls: AI Training preferences in robots.txt apply to the relevant site or path, while page-level AI Training and AI Grounding preferences apply to individual pages.”
Context: Microsoft Bing blog "Your content, your choice: clearer preferences for training and grounding" (30 Oct 2026). The AI Training preference in robots.txt is the shared preference developed with other industry participants from the IETF AI Preferences working group's draft (the "__usage_ai-training" token that OpenAI, Google and Anthropic also said they would honor the same day); page-level AI Grounding preferences are Microsoft's own. The new preferences replace Microsoft's use of NoArchive and NoCache for training and grounding; sites using those must act by 1 Mar 2027. Sources: (1) Bing blog, 30 Oct 2026 (primary); (2) Search Engine Roundtable, 30 Oct 2026 ("February 1, 2027: Microsoft begins honoring the new preferences as it crawls pages"); (3) Engadget, 31 Oct 2026 (Microsoft "said it will start supporting it on February 1, 2027"); (4) PPC Land, 30 Oct 2026; (5) The Verge, 30 Oct 2026 (Google and Microsoft "plan to support it next year").
How we judge it
Our interpretation: kept if Microsoft's new AI Training preferences (including the shared robots.txt AI-training preference) and AI Grounding preferences take effect from 1 Feb 2027 as announced, i.e. Microsoft's Bing documentation, blog or webmaster tools, or credible reporting, describe them as being honored from that date and Microsoft has not announced a delay. Broken if Microsoft postpones the start beyond 1 Feb 2027 or drops the plan. Whether Microsoft's crawlers comply page by page is not graded (it cannot be audited from outside); credible reporting that Microsoft is not honoring the preferences at all after 1 Feb 2027 would count as broken.
Resolution criteria are our interpretation of the claim, written before grading. Methodology
- Said
- Resolve by
- Due in 87 days
- Verdict
- Pending
- Stated probability
- None stated
- Specificity
- 3 of 3 (precise and measurable)
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