Bing Webmaster Tools setup guide

Bing Webmaster Tools is the free dashboard Microsoft Bing provides for seeing how Bing indexes and ranks your site. For sites that get meaningful search traffic from Microsoft surface, it is the counterpart to Google Search Console: it shows clicks and impressions per query and page, flags crawl errors, and lets you request faster indexing. You can never make Bing use your Google data, so it is worth a separate, small setup even when Search Console is already running.

Verify your site

Start by signing in to Bing Webmaster Tools with a Microsoft account, then add your site. Bing supports two property styles, and the one you pick changes where you configure things:

• Import from Search Console. If you already own the site in Google Search Console, connect that property and Bing imports it automatically. This is the fastest route and it copies your verified ownership across.
• URL submission. Provide your exact URL (with or without the www subdomain as you use it). Bing then asks you to prove ownership.

For a direct domain, ownership proof is one of three options: upload an XML file to the site root, add a meta tag with a verification string to the HTML head, or add a CNAME DNS record. The DNS method is handy during a migration because it needs no code change.

Whichever route you pick, finish by confirming the property shows as verified. Check the DNS record after a migration to a new host, since a control-panel reinstall can silently drop a manually added verification record.

Submit sitemaps

Once verified, copy your robots.txt and XML sitemap URLs into the Sitemaps section. Bing follows the same sitemap rules as Google, respects the <loc> entries, and processes the file at least once every 24 hours, so you do not need a separate Bing-specific sitemap. Refer to the XML sitemap guide for the file structure and limits before submitting.

After submission, the Sitemaps report lists each file with its last crawl time. A sitemap that shows sustained zero submitted URLs usually points to a robots.txt block or a canonical that points elsewhere, so confirm those before resubmitting.

Crawl with IndexNow

The biggest practical difference from Google is IndexNow. It is an open protocol shared by Bing, Yandex and other participating engines that lets you push URL changes the instant you publish or edit them, instead of waiting for the next crawl cycle. In many cases Bing crawls the notified pages within about a day, versus days to weeks when it must discover changes on its own.

To use it: generate an IndexNow key in Bing, host a key file with that key at the site root so Bing can validate ownership, then send a POST request to the IndexNow endpoint each time a URL changes. Plugins for WordPress, an API call in a build pipeline, or a manual ping from a terminal all work. Search engines only honour the ping for the domain that hosts the key file, and the URL you submit must match. The dedicated IndexNow setup article covers the key file and request format in detail.

Keep IndexNow running as a routine push step for a frequently updated site, and still submit the sitemap as the fallback discovery path for pages you forget to ping. Combined with your Google Search Console setup, this gives both major engines a working, current map of your published content. Use the URL submission and crawl tools in both dashboards during a site migration, because each engine repopulates its index on its own schedule.