How to submit a website to Bing Webmaster Tools
7 min read
Bing powers its own results plus Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Copilot's web grounding, so an indexed site there reaches an audience that Google Search Console cannot show you.
Submission takes about fifteen minutes: verify ownership, hand over a sitemap, then keep IndexNow pinging new URLs. Everything below can be prepared with free ToolForge tools first.
Before you start
Bing will not index what it cannot fetch. Confirm these three things first, otherwise verification succeeds and indexing silently stalls.
- robots.txt allows crawling and does not contain a site-wide Disallow: /.
- An XML sitemap exists at a stable URL and lists every public page.
- The site serves valid HTTPS and each URL resolves without a redirect chain.
Step-by-step submission
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1. Create the account
Go to bing.com/webmasters and sign in with a Microsoft, Google or Facebook account. Signing in with Google unlocks the one-click import option in the next step.
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2. Import from Google Search Console, or add the site manually
If the site is already verified in Search Console, choose Import and Bing carries the verification and sitemaps over — this is the fastest path. Otherwise paste your full https:// URL into the Add site box.
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3. Verify ownership
Bing offers three methods: upload BingSiteAuth.xml to your web root, add a <meta name="msvalidate.01"> tag to the homepage head, or add a CNAME record at your DNS provider. The meta tag is easiest for single-page and framework-rendered sites; DNS is best when you own several subdomains.
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4. Submit your sitemap
Open Sitemaps in the left navigation, choose Submit sitemap and enter the absolute URL, e.g. https://example.com/sitemap.xml. Also add a Sitemap: line to robots.txt so any crawler discovers it without being told.
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5. Submit individual URLs
Under URL Submission you can push up to 10,000 URLs per day on eligible sites. Use it for new and substantially updated pages rather than the whole site.
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6. Turn on IndexNow
IndexNow notifies Bing, Yandex and Seznam the moment a page changes. Generate a key, host it as a text file at your web root, and ping the API on publish. Many hosts and CMS plugins do this automatically once the key is in place.
Choosing a verification method
All three methods are equivalent to Bing; pick the one your stack makes easiest to keep in place. Verification is checked periodically, so never remove the file, tag or record after the green tick appears.
- XML file — best when you can write to the public web root and deployments preserve static files.
- Meta tag — best for React, Next.js and TanStack Start sites where head tags are managed in code.
- CNAME record — best for large organisations, and it survives site rebuilds and platform migrations.
After submission
Indexing is not instant. Expect a few days for the first crawl and up to a couple of weeks for full coverage on a new domain. Meanwhile the reports become useful.
- Site Explorer shows which URLs Bing has discovered and which it skipped, with reasons.
- URL Inspection returns the fetched HTML, so you can confirm Bing sees your rendered content.
- SEO Reports flags missing titles, duplicate descriptions and other on-page errors in bulk.
- Crawl Information lists 404s, timeouts and blocked URLs — fix these before submitting more pages.
Troubleshooting
- Verification fails — the file or tag is usually served on www but requested on the apex domain, or a redirect intercepts the request. Check both hostnames.
- Sitemap accepted but 0 URLs discovered — the sitemap URLs use a different protocol or hostname than the verified property.
- Pages crawled but not indexed — thin, duplicated or near-identical content; consolidate and add a canonical tag.
- Everything blocked — a leftover Disallow: / from a staging deploy is the most common cause.