If your business website isn’t showing up on Bing, you’re missing a steady stream of search traffic. Bing powers search across Microsoft Edge, Windows, and several partner platforms, and its users often include professionals, decision-makers, and desktop shoppers. Many of them are ready to buy.
The good news is that Bing gives website owners free tools to get pages discovered quickly. This guide covers four things: verifying your site in Bing Webmaster Tools, requesting indexing, using IndexNow for instant updates, and reading the Search Performance report.
Why Bing Webmaster Tools Matters for Businesses
Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) is a free service from Microsoft. It shows how Bing crawls, indexes, and ranks your website. For a business site, that means you can:
- Confirm your service pages, product pages, and blog posts are indexed
- Spot crawl errors before they cost you leads
- See which search queries bring visitors
- Notify Bing the moment you publish or update content
Many small businesses set up Google Search Console and stop there. Adding Bing takes about fifteen minutes and gives you a second source of organic traffic.
How to Verify Your Website in Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing needs proof that you own your site before it shows you any data. Here’s how to verify it.
Step 1: Sign in. Go to the Bing Webmaster Tools portal and sign in with a Microsoft, Google, or Facebook account.
Step 2: Add your site. Enter your website URL, such as https://www.yourbusiness.com. If your site is already verified in Google Search Console, you can import it directly. This is the fastest route and skips manual verification.
Step 3: Choose a verification method. If you add the site manually, Bing offers three options:
- XML file authentication: Download the BingSiteAuth.xml file and upload it to your site’s root directory.
- Meta tag: Paste a meta tag into the
<head>section of your homepage. - CNAME record: Add a CNAME record in your domain’s DNS settings.
The meta tag is the easiest option for most business owners, especially on WordPress. The CNAME method is more durable because it survives theme changes and redesigns.
Step 4: Click Verify. Once Bing confirms ownership, your dashboard unlocks.
Submit Your Sitemap First
Before requesting indexing for individual pages, submit your XML sitemap. A sitemap lists the important URLs on your site and helps Bing discover them efficiently.
In BWT, open Sitemaps from the left menu, click Submit sitemap, and enter its address, usually https://www.yourbusiness.com/sitemap.xml. WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast, Rank Math, and AIOSEO generate this file automatically.
Resubmit only when your sitemap’s location changes. Bing re-reads it on its own schedule.
How to Request Indexing in Bing Webmaster Tools
Sitemaps handle discovery in bulk. For a new service page, a press release, or an updated pricing page, you can ask Bing to look at the URL directly.
- Open Bing Webmaster Tools and select your verified site.
- Click URL Submission in the left navigation.
- Choose Submit URLs.
- Paste the full URLs you want crawled, one per line.
- Click Submit.
Your daily submission quota depends on your site’s age and history, and it’s displayed on the URL Submission page. Prioritize pages that matter commercially: new landing pages, updated product listings, and fresh blog content.
A submission doesn’t guarantee indexing. It signals to Bing that the page deserves attention. Thin, duplicate, or low-quality pages can still be skipped, so make sure each page offers original, useful content.
How to Use IndexNow with Bing Webmaster Tools
Manual submission works, but it doesn’t scale if you publish often or run an online store with changing inventory. IndexNow is an open protocol that automatically tells participating search engines whenever a URL is added, updated, or deleted. Bing supports it, and a submission to one participating engine is shared with the others.
Check whether you already have it
Several platforms support IndexNow natively, including Wix, Duda, GoDaddy’s website builder, and XenForo. Cloudflare supports it through Crawler Hints. If you use one of these, you may already be set up. Check your Bing Webmaster Tools account to see whether your URLs are being submitted.
Use a plugin
- WordPress: The official IndexNow plugin, Yoast SEO, Rank Math, AIOSEO, and SEOPress all offer IndexNow integration.
- Shopify: Apps such as InstaIndex handle submissions for you.
- Drupal, Joomla, PrestaShop, Shopware, OpenCart, and others: Extensions are available for each.
Set it up manually
If your site isn’t covered, the process takes four steps:
- Generate an API key. The key proves you own the domain.
- Host the key. Save it as a UTF-8 text file at your site root, for example
https://www.yourbusiness.com/yourkey.txt. - Submit URLs. Send a request with your host, key, key location, and list of changed URLs.
- Verify. Use Bing Webmaster Tools to confirm the URLs were received.
Responses tell you what happened. A 200 means success, 400 means an invalid format, 403 means the key couldn’t be validated, 422 means the URLs don’t match your host, and 429 means too many requests.
Set the right expectations
IndexNow tells search engines about changes. It doesn’t guarantee crawling or indexing, and submitted URLs still count against your crawl quota. Only submit URLs that changed after you started using it. There’s no need to resubmit your entire archive.
Using the Bing Webmaster Tools Search Performance Report
Once Bing starts indexing your pages, the Search Performance report shows how they perform. You’ll find it in the left menu of your dashboard.
The report tracks four core metrics:
- Clicks: How many times users clicked through to your site
- Impressions: How often your pages appeared in results
- Average CTR: The share of impressions that became clicks
- Average position: Where your pages typically rank
You can filter by date range, country, device, and page, and view data by query. Here’s how businesses can put it to work:
- Find high-impression, low-click pages. These often need better titles and meta descriptions.
- Discover new keywords. Queries you didn’t target but rank for can become new content topics.
- Compare devices. If mobile performance lags, check your page speed and layout.
- Track results after changes. After updating a service page or submitting it through IndexNow, watch how impressions and position shift over the following weeks.
Common Bing Indexing Problems and Fixes
If your pages still aren’t indexed, check these first:
- Blocked by robots.txt or a noindex tag: Make sure you aren’t accidentally excluding important pages.
- Thin or duplicate content: Bing favors pages with unique, substantial value.
- Poor internal linking: Link new pages from established ones so crawlers can find them.
- Slow or unreliable hosting: Frequent errors reduce how often crawlers return.
- Missing sitemap: Submit one in BWT.
Use the URL Inspection tool in BWT to see how Bing views a specific page and what might be holding it back.
A Simple Workflow for Business Owners
- Verify your site (or import it from Google Search Console).
- Submit your XML sitemap.
- Turn on IndexNow through your CMS or a plugin.
- Use URL Submission for important one-off pages.
- Review the Search Performance report monthly and refine your content.
Final Thoughts
Bing Webmaster Tools gives your business direct visibility into how a major search engine treats your website, at no cost. Verify your site, keep your sitemap current, automate updates with IndexNow, and use the performance data to make better content decisions. A little consistent attention here can turn Bing into a dependable source of qualified leads.
