Home / Bing Webmaster Tools: How to Set It Up

Bing Webmaster Tools: what it is and how to set it up

Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft’s free dashboard for your site’s search presence on Bing. It shows how often your pages appear, how many people click, and whether Bing can crawl and index them.

Updated 2026-11-10

Why use it if you already have Google Search Console

Search Console only covers Google. Bing has its own index, and its results also feed other search products such as Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. A page can be indexed on Google and missing on Bing, and only Bing Webmaster Tools will tell you.

Add your site

1. Go to bing.com/webmasters and sign in with a Microsoft or Google account.
2. Choose Import to bring in sites you already have in Google Search Console. Bing copies the sites and, in most cases, their verification, so you skip the next section.
3. Or choose Add a site manually and enter the full address, for example https://example.com/.

Verify that you own it

If you added the site manually, Bing asks you to prove ownership. There are three ways:

• XML file. Download BingSiteAuth.xml and upload it to the root of your site.
• Meta tag. Paste the msvalidate.01 tag into the <head> of your home page.
• DNS record. Add the CNAME record Bing gives you at your domain provider.

Pick one, publish it, then press Verify. Leave the file, tag or record in place afterwards.

Submit your sitemap

Open Sitemaps, press Submit sitemap and enter the address of your sitemap.xml. Bing uses it to find new pages. You can also add the line Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml to your robots.txt.

Read the reports that matter

• Search Performance shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position, by page, query, country and device.
• URL Inspection shows whether one page is indexed and lets you ask Bing to look at it again.
• Sitemaps shows what Bing found in each file you submitted.
• Backlinks and crawl reports show who links to you and which pages Bing could not fetch.

Tell Bing about changes with IndexNow

IndexNow is an open protocol that lets your site notify search engines the moment a page is added, changed or removed, instead of waiting for a crawl. Bing supports it, and many site platforms have a plugin or a setting for it.

If you run more than one site

Each site is a separate entry in Bing Webmaster Tools, and so is each property in Google Search Console. Trafficfolio shows every site’s Bing and Google numbers in one portfolio, with a combined total.

Connect Bing to Trafficfolio

1. Make sure your sites are added and verified in Bing Webmaster Tools (the steps above).
2. In Bing Webmaster Tools, click the Settings gear, open API Access, accept the terms if asked, and click Generate API Key. One key covers every site on your account.
3. In Trafficfolio, open Settings, paste the key under Bing and click Connect with key.
4. Bing’s clicks and impressions appear next to Google’s for each site. Step-by-step help with links is in the connection guide.

Stuck on a message? See the help page.

Questions

Is Bing Webmaster Tools free?

Yes. Microsoft offers it at no charge for any site you can verify.

Can I import my sites from Google Search Console?

Yes. Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools and choose Import. Bing brings over your sites so you do not need to verify each one again.

How long until Bing data appears?

Usually within a few days of verifying. Pages that Bing has not crawled yet will not show impressions until it does.

Does Bing Webmaster Tools replace Google Search Console?

No. Each one reports on its own search engine, so sites that want traffic from both should use both.