To submit your site to Bing, you open a free Bing Webmaster Tools account (with a Microsoft, Google or Facebook login), add and verify your site, submit your sitemap, and report changes through IndexNow. The fastest route is an existing, verified Google Search Console: Bing imports your sites with their sitemaps and verifies them automatically. Without Google, you verify with an XML file, a meta tag or a CNAME record in DNS. According to Bing, first data usually appears after 48 hours, with no backfill. IndexNow is an open protocol: you report changed URLs with a key, and participating search engines share the notice. It does not guarantee indexing.
Bing runs alongside Google here. Sebastian, my AI employee for SEO and GEO, set up Bing Webmaster Tools in the first build phase of kevinwelter.com (August 27 to September 2, 2026), together with Search Console. The Google side is covered in Setting Up Google Search Console.
What Bing Webmaster Tools shows you
Bing Webmaster Tools is to Bing what Search Console is to Google. According to Bing's help pages (retrieved November 4, 2026), it covers search performance, AI citations (AI Performance), URL inspection, sitemaps, an IndexNow report and an on-demand site scan for technical errors. People also search for it as "Bing Search Console"; the official name is Bing Webmaster Tools. How it compares with crawlers and paid suites is in SEO Audit Tools Compared.
How to submit your site to Bing: account and verification
You sign up at bing.com/webmasters; then there are two ways in.
Import from Google Search Console. Bing asks for access to your Search Console account, lists the sites verified there with their sitemaps, and you pick. Bing says the imported sites are verified automatically. You can import up to 100 sites in one go, and the limit of 1,000 sites per account still applies. Bing then periodically re-validates ownership through that access and imports new sitemaps. You disconnect in the Profile section, so set up another verification method first if you plan to; that precaution is an inference, not a line from the help page.
Add and verify manually. You enter the URL. A property can cover a whole domain or just one branch such as example.com/shop/. Bing offers four verification methods:
Anyone who should read along gets a role under User Management: Read only, Read/Write or Administrator. Bing notes that Read/Write users can also block crawling and indexing, so a contractor who only analyses gets Read only.
Submit your sitemap to Bing
Bing accepts XML sitemaps and index files, RSS, Atom and plain text lists. In the Sitemaps section, click "Submit sitemaps" and enter the URL, usually https://example.com/sitemap.xml. Add a line Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml to your robots.txt as well.
According to the Bing blog (July 31, 2025), Bing fetches a sitemap immediately after submission and then revisits it, typically at least once per day. lastmod counts as a freshness signal, ideally in ISO 8601 format with a time and only when the content actually changed; Bing ignores changefreq and priority.
IndexNow: what the protocol does and what it doesn't
IndexNow is an open protocol for telling search engines that a URL was added, updated or deleted. The building blocks according to indexnow.org (retrieved November 4, 2026):
- Generate a key. 8 to 128 characters from letters, digits and dashes.
- Host the key file. A UTF-8 text file
<your-key>.txt in the root directory, containing exactly that key. Other locations work via keyLocation, but only cover URLs below that path.
- Submit URLs. One URL via a GET request to
https://<searchengine>/indexnow?url=…&key=…, many as JSON via POST, up to 10,000 URLs per request.
- Read the response. 200 only means: received. 202 means: received, key validation pending. 403 means an invalid key, 422 URLs that don't belong to the host, 429 too many requests.
On November 4, 2026, the official participant list names Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver, Yep, the Internet Archive and Amazonbot. Google is not on it.
What IndexNow can't do is stated in the indexnow.org FAQ:
- No indexing guarantee. Crawl quota, thin or duplicate content, technical blocks or the engine's own decision can all keep a URL out.
- No free pass on quota. Every submitted URL counts toward your site's crawl quota, though such URLs are typically crawled sooner.
- Not retroactive. Older changes reach Bing through the sitemap with an accurate
lastmod.
- No rapid fire. Don't resubmit an unchanged URL; wait at least five minutes between submissions of the same URL.
Often you don't need code: according to Bing, many systems ship IndexNow or add it via plugin, such as WordPress with Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO or SEOPress, plus Shopify, Drupal, TYPO3 and Cloudflare. The IndexNow report in Webmaster Tools shows whether your site already reports, and under "Important URLs Missed" it lists significant URLs indexed in the last seven days without IndexNow. Only you and the search engines should know the key, says the protocol, so keep it out of screenshots and public repositories.
Manual URL submission still exists, but Bing recommends IndexNow and says the older methods may be deprecated.
URL inspection and site scan: the diagnostics
URL Inspection checks one address in three cards: index status, SEO issues by priority, and structured data in Microdata, Microformats, Open Graph and JSON-LD. The "Live URL" tab shows what Bingbot fetches right now but does not follow redirects. After a fix, you can request indexing within your daily quota.
Site Scan crawls your site, a sitemap or a URL list on demand, within a monthly quota Bing sets automatically. Careful with "Crawling speed": Bing says a high value can slow your site down for real visitors.
The reports: search performance and AI citations
Search Performance counts clicks and impressions from web search, chat responses, news, images, videos and the knowledge panel; keywords and pages exist only for web. The view reaches back up to six months, against Google's 16, so export early and regularly.
AI Performance has shown since February 2026 how often your pages are cited in AI answers: Total Citations, Average Cited Pages, grounding queries (the AI's search phrases) and citations per URL. According to Bing it covers Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. Bing stresses that the report is a sample, not a complete log, and does not measure rankings. Since October 13, 2026, a beta called "Topics Portfolio" groups grounding queries into topics where there is enough data.
On kevinwelter.com, in Sebastian's measurement, Microsoft Copilot cited the site 183 times in the three months through September 16, 2026, and the page with the most Google clicks was not the most-cited one. There are limits too: in my SE Ranking test, Bing did not know a single incoming link to my site, while the data tool found 41 referring domains, including three editorial links confirmed live. The rest of that comparison is in SE Ranking Review: API, MCP and Real Numbers.
Why Bing matters for AI search, and what is still open
Documented for Copilot. For Microsoft Copilot and Copilot Chat in Microsoft 365 (work accounts), Microsoft documents (doc dated October 29, 2026): with web search enabled, Copilot turns the prompt into a short query for the Bing search service and builds the answer from the results. It follows that a page Bing hasn't indexed can't come in as a source through that web search. The data protection side is in Microsoft Copilot and GDPR at Work.
Documented for ChatGPT, but only in part. OpenAI's help article on web search (updated October 2026) says ChatGPT search "sometimes partners with other search providers" and sends them rewritten queries. As the privacy reference for those providers, OpenAI links the Microsoft privacy statement. The article does not name Bing, and it gives no share. OpenAI also runs its own search crawler: sites that block OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt are not shown in ChatGPT search answers, according to OpenAI.
Open. No primary source shows that Bing Webmaster Tools or IndexNow improve your visibility in ChatGPT, and Bing doesn't name the "partner integrations" in AI Performance. Bing is a documented prerequisite for Copilot and a plausible but unproven contribution for ChatGPT. What else a website needs for AI search is in Optimizing Your Website for AI Search.
The employee who reads Bing without submitting anything
Setup is quick. What's missing afterwards is someone who checks in regularly, exports in time, and puts Google clicks next to Copilot citations. Here, that's Sebastian. He combines remeasurement through Search Console, Bing and AI citations, and he reads both consoles through their interfaces, read-only. For other people's accounts there is a hard line: he can read Bing Webmaster Tools once access is granted, but he can't submit anything. Every URL submission or IndexNow request in someone else's account goes through my explicit approval, case by case. Nothing goes live without me. How he works is on Sebastian's page; how this data turns into an audit is in How to Run an SEO Audit With AI.
Frequently asked questions
What does Bing Webmaster Tools cost?
Nothing. Bing explicitly calls the account free.
Do I need Bing if I already use Google Search Console?
Yes, because the data is separate: Search Console shows nothing about Bing search, Copilot or AI summaries in Bing. The import saves you a second verification.
Does IndexNow replace the sitemap?
No. indexnow.org recommends both: IndexNow for fresh changes, the sitemap as a complete inventory of all URLs, including the ones that rarely change.
Does Google support IndexNow?
Google is not on indexnow.org's official participant list as of November 4, 2026. The protocol only shares submissions among participants; for Google, the sitemap and Search Console remain the route.
What to do next
In this order: open the account, import your sites from Search Console or verify via XML file or CNAME, submit the sitemap. Then check the IndexNow report. Set a monthly reminder for the export, and after four weeks look at AI Performance to see which pages Copilot cites.
If you don't want to keep that rhythm yourself, the role matters more than the tool; how my employees are set up is in the org chart. And my community AI Employee Framework holds Sebastian's own course, which shows exactly this chain, from the first measurement to the follow-up.
