Most site owners set up Google Search Console and stop there. That leaves a second index — and the search surfaces built on top of it — running blind on your site.
Bing Webmaster Tools is free, takes about twenty minutes to set up, and gives you a genuinely different view of your site than Google's tools do: a separate crawler's opinion of your pages, its own index coverage data, and a direct URL submission route that Google doesn't offer at all. If your site is new, that last part is the strongest argument for doing this today.
Here's the whole setup, step by step.
Why Bother With the Second Search Engine
Three practical reasons, none of them about market share arguments:
- Bing's index doesn't only serve Bing. Other search products and AI assistants draw on it, so being absent from that index means being absent from more places than the name suggests.
- You get an independent crawl diagnosis. When Google isn't indexing a page, it's genuinely useful to know whether a second crawler can fetch and render it. If both say the same thing, the problem is your site. If only one does, the problem is narrower.
- Direct URL submission exists. Bing accepts URLs pushed to it, with a daily quota. Google deliberately does not offer a bulk equivalent. For a new site with no external links, this is the fastest legitimate route into an index.
Step 1: Create the Account and Add Your Site
Go to Bing Webmaster Tools and sign in with a Microsoft, Google, or Facebook account. Use an account your business actually controls long-term — not a personal login that leaves with an employee.
Then you have a choice, and it's the one that saves the most time:
Option A — Import from Google Search Console. If your site is already verified in Search Console, connect that account and import. Bing pulls in the properties and takes the existing verification as proof of ownership, so you skip the entire verification step and your sitemaps usually come across too. For most people this is a two-minute job.
Option B — Add the site manually. Enter the URL and verify it yourself. Do this if you don't use Search Console, or if you want the properties configured differently.
If you go with Option B, three verification methods are offered:
- XML file upload. Download the file Bing gives you and upload it to your site's root so it's reachable at
yourdomain.com/BingSiteAuth.xml. Simple, and it survives theme changes. - Meta tag. Paste a tag into the
<head>of your homepage. Easy on most CMSs via an SEO plugin's "header code" field. It breaks if someone changes the theme without moving it. - DNS CNAME record. Add a record at your DNS provider. Slowest to propagate, but it verifies the whole domain rather than one host, and it's the most durable.
Pick whichever you can genuinely do. If you're not sure whether a plugin field is loading in the <head>, view the page source after saving and search for the tag — verification failures are almost always "the tag isn't actually on the live page".
Step 2: Add Your Sitemap
Once verified, go to Sitemaps and submit the full URL of your XML sitemap — typically yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml or sitemap_index.xml depending on your platform.
Two checks before you paste it in:
- Open the sitemap in a browser. It should load and list real URLs. A sitemap that 404s or returns HTML is the most common submission failure.
- Make sure it lists canonical URLs only — no redirects, no
noindexpages, no parameter variants. A sitemap is a statement of what you want indexed, so contradictions in it slow everything down. Our XML sitemap guide covers building a clean one.
Also confirm your robots.txt references the sitemap and doesn't block the crawler. Bingbot follows robots.txt like any well-behaved crawler; a stray disallow rule from a staging setup will quietly stop everything else in this article from working.
Step 3: Use URL Submission for What Matters Now
Under URL Submission you can push individual URLs directly. There's a daily allowance that varies by site, so spend it deliberately:
- New pages you've just published
- Pages you've substantially rewritten
- Your key commercial pages, once
Don't fire your entire site at it. Submission is a nudge to crawl, not a ranking action, and pushing hundreds of thin URLs gains you nothing.
Then set up IndexNow and stop doing this by hand. IndexNow is an open protocol: you host a key file, and your site pings participating engines whenever content changes. Many CMS platforms and CDNs have a plugin or a built-in toggle. Once it's live, publishing a page notifies the engines automatically. Our IndexNow walkthrough covers the key file and setup; if you have it working, the automated route replaces most manual submission.
Step 4: The Reports Worth Your First Week
Bing's dashboard has more tools than most people need. Four are worth an early look:
Site Explorer / URL Inspection. Check whether a specific URL is known, when it was last crawled, and what Bing saw. This is your first stop whenever a page isn't showing up.
Index Explorer / Coverage. Which of your URLs are in the index and which were excluded, with the reason. Read the exclusions — "blocked by robots.txt" and "noindex" appear far more often than people expect, usually left over from a site build.
Crawl information and settings. Crawl errors are listed here, and there's a crawl-control setting to adjust how aggressively Bingbot fetches your site. Leave it on the automatic option unless you have a genuine server-load problem.
SEO Reports / Site Scan. An automated technical scan flagging missing titles, duplicate descriptions, missing alt text, and similar. Treat it as a checklist, not a verdict — the findings are generic, but on a new site they usually surface a handful of real fixes.
There's also a keyword research tool, drawing on a different data source than the Google-based tools most people use. It's a useful second opinion when you're checking whether a phrase has real demand.
Step 5: Get the Basics Right Around It
Bing Webmaster Tools reports on your site; it can't fix it. Three things that determine what it will show you:
- Internal links. Pages with no internal links pointing at them are hard for any crawler to find and easy to treat as unimportant.
- Clean canonicals. One canonical URL per page, consistent with what's in the sitemap.
- External signals. A brand-new site with no inbound links anywhere gets crawled slowly regardless of how many URLs you submit. Being listed in legitimate, relevant directories and lists is one of the ordinary ways a new site becomes discoverable — different from, and safer than, any scheme promising bulk links.
Troubleshooting the Two Common Failures
"Verification failed." The file or tag isn't reachable on the live site. Load yourdomain.com/BingSiteAuth.xml in a browser, or view source and search for the meta tag. If your site redirects www to non-www (or the reverse), verify the version that actually serves content, and add both as properties.
"Sitemap submitted but nothing indexed." Expected, at first — submission requests crawling, not indexing, and new sites take time. If it persists for weeks, use URL Inspection on one page to see whether Bing has fetched it at all. If it hasn't, it's a discovery problem (robots.txt, internal links, server errors). If it has and still isn't indexed, it's usually a quality or duplication signal, and the fix is on the page, not in the tool.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Bing Webmaster Tools free? Yes, entirely, like Google Search Console.
Can I import everything from Google Search Console? Yes — connecting a verified Search Console account imports your properties, carries the verification over, and generally brings sitemaps with it. It's the fastest setup path.
Do I need both Bing Webmaster Tools and Search Console? Yes, if you want visibility into both indexes. They report on different crawlers and different data, and the disagreements between them are often the most useful diagnostic you'll get. Our Search Console setup walkthrough covers the Google side.
How long until Bing indexes my site? There's no fixed timeline — days to weeks is typical for a new site, and it depends on crawl discovery, site quality, and how findable your pages are. Submission speeds up crawling; it doesn't guarantee indexing.
What's the difference between URL submission and IndexNow? URL submission is manual, inside the tool, with a daily quota. IndexNow is an automated protocol your site uses to notify participating engines when content changes. Set up IndexNow and you'll rarely need the manual route.
Do It Once, Check It Monthly
Verification, sitemap, IndexNow, then a monthly look at coverage and crawl errors. That's the whole ongoing commitment, and it gives you an early warning system for problems that would otherwise show up as a slow, unexplained decline.
Once your pages are indexed and worth sending people to, get them in front of an audience that's actively browsing — submit your site to a Top list on AddTopWebsite in the category that fits.
