Search Visibility

Set up Bing Webmaster Tools in about ten minutes

Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft's equivalent of Google Search Console. Its index also powers search inside ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, so verifying your site here puts you in front of both traditional and AI search. This walkthrough covers the full setup: account, verification, sitemap, and IndexNow.

8 steps ~10 minutes Free

Create your account

Go to bing.com/webmasters and select Sign in. You can use a Microsoft, Google, or Facebook account — there is no separate registration. If you already use Google Search Console, signing in with the same Google account makes the next step considerably faster.

Tip: Use the account that controls your other site infrastructure. Verification and access stay tied to whichever account you choose here.

Add your site

After signing in you will see two ways to add a site. Pick whichever matches your situation.

Import from Google Search Console Fastest

If your site is already verified in Google Search Console, choose Import. Bing reads your verified properties and sitemaps from Google and verifies them automatically — no DNS records or file uploads needed.

Add manually

Enter your full site URL, including the protocol — for example https://example.com. Use the exact version your site canonically serves. You will verify ownership in the next step.

Verify ownership

If you added the site manually, Bing offers three verification methods. Any one of them works; you only need one.

XML file. Download BingSiteAuth.xml and upload it to your site root so it is reachable at https://example.com/BingSiteAuth.xml. Simple if you can upload files to your server.
Meta tag. Copy the provided tag into the <head> of your homepage. Good for CMS-hosted sites where you can edit templates but not files.
DNS CNAME record. Add a CNAME record at your domain registrar pointing the provided hostname to verify.bing.com. This is the most durable method — it survives site redesigns and server moves — but DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to propagate.

The meta tag method looks like this:

<meta name="msvalidate.01" content="YOUR_VERIFICATION_CODE" />

After placing your chosen method, return to Bing Webmaster Tools and select Verify. A green confirmation means the site is yours.

Keep it in place. Bing re-checks verification periodically. Removing the file, tag, or DNS record later will un-verify the site.

Submit your sitemap

A sitemap tells Bing every URL you want indexed, so the crawler does not have to discover pages one link at a time. In the left navigation, open Sitemaps, select Submit sitemap, and enter the full URL:

https://example.com/sitemap.xml

Two practices make sitemap discovery resilient beyond the dashboard:

Declare it in robots.txt. Add the line below to https://example.com/robots.txt. Every search engine reads this file on every crawl, so your sitemap stays discoverable even if a dashboard submission is missed.
Keep lastmod accurate. Bing uses the <lastmod> dates in your sitemap to prioritize recrawling pages that actually changed.

User-agent: *
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml

Enable IndexNow

IndexNow lets you push new and updated URLs to Bing the moment they change, instead of waiting for the next crawl. Setup is three small pieces:

Generate a key. Any hexadecimal string of 8 to 128 characters works. Bing Webmaster Tools will generate one for you under Settings, then API access, then IndexNow, or create your own.
Host the key file. Place a plain-text file named after the key at your site root. Its only content is the key itself.
Ping the API whenever you publish or update a page.

The key file:

https://example.com/YOUR_KEY.txt
contents: YOUR_KEY

A single-URL ping:

https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow?url=https://example.com/new-page&key=YOUR_KEY

Or submit a batch of URLs with one POST request:

POST https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "host": "example.com",
  "key": "YOUR_KEY",
  "keyLocation": "https://example.com/YOUR_KEY.txt",
  "urlList": [
    "https://example.com/",
    "https://example.com/new-page"
  ]
}

One submission, many engines. IndexNow is a shared protocol — a single ping notifies Bing, Yandex, Seznam, and Naver simultaneously.

Know what to expect

Verification is instant, but reporting is not. Plan around these timelines so an empty dashboard on day one does not look like a failure:

~48 hours before crawl, index, and traffic reports begin to populate after verification.
Days to weeks for full indexing of a new site, depending on size and how the crawler prioritizes it.
Quotas apply. URL submission is capped per site per day, and sitemap submissions are limited per account per day. Large multi-site rollouts should be spread across days.

Confirm everything works

Run through this list once setup is complete:

Site shows as verified in the Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard
Sitemap status reads "Success" under the Sitemaps section
robots.txt is reachable and declares the sitemap
IndexNow key file loads in a browser and returns the key
A test IndexNow ping returns HTTP 200 or 202
After 48 hours: crawl and index data appear in Reports

From here, check the Search Performance report every week or two. The URL Inspection tool answers the most common question — "is this page indexed, and if not, why?" — for any URL on a verified site.

Connect via API (optional)

Everything in the dashboard is also available programmatically. Under Settings, then API access, generate your Bing Webmaster API key; your scripts can then submit URLs and pull your search stats. Query what searches you appear for:

curl "https://ssl.bing.com/webmaster/api.svc/json/GetQueryStats?apikey=YOUR_API_KEY&siteUrl=https://example.com"

And submit new URLs straight from your publishing script:

curl -X POST "https://ssl.bing.com/webmaster/api.svc/json/SubmitUrlBatch?apikey=YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"siteUrl": "https://example.com", "urlList": ["https://example.com/new-page"]}'

You don't need to be a programmer to use this — describe what you want to an AI assistant and let it write the script.