Bing is the web search engine operated by Microsoft. It has its own crawler, Bingbot, its own index and its own webmaster tools. Beyond bing.com, Bing's index and APIs feed other products, including Microsoft Copilot, Windows search and some third-party search engines and assistants. For B2B companies whose buyers use Microsoft devices at work, Bing can be a meaningful source of traffic.
Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing Webmaster Tools is Bing's equivalent of Search Console. It shows search performance, crawl and index status, backlinks and site scan reports. You can import a site from Google Search Console to verify it quickly, which makes setup easy.
- Submit XML sitemaps
- Inspect URLs and request indexing
- Review search performance and keywords
- Check backlinks and site scan issues
IndexNow
Bing supports IndexNow, an open protocol that lets a site notify participating search engines when a URL is added, updated or deleted. It speeds up discovery on engines that support it. Google does not participate in IndexNow, so it complements rather than replaces normal sitemap practice.
https://www.bing.com/indexnow?url=https://example.com/new-page&key=your-keyHow Bing differs
Bing's guidelines are similar in spirit to Google's but not identical. Bing has historically been more explicit about some signals, such as social signals and exact-match terms, though it too relies on many machine learning systems. Rankings on the two engines often differ for the same query, so it is worth tracking separately.
Example
A quick Bing setup
Hypothetical IT asset management tool Rackhollow has never checked Bing. Analytics shows a steady share of visits from Bing, mostly from desktop users during working hours. The team imports the site into Bing Webmaster Tools, submits the sitemap, adds IndexNow to its CMS publish hook and starts tracking a few priority keywords on both engines.
Common mistakes
Ignoring Bing entirely
Even when Google dominates, Bing powers other products. Basic verification and sitemap submission cost very little.
Questions
Microsoft and OpenAI have a partnership, and Bing has been reported as one of the sources for ChatGPT's search features. OpenAI does not publish a full list of its search providers, so treat specifics as uncertain.
