Bing Webmaster Tools.

Bing Webmaster Tools are the free counterpart to Google Search Console for Microsoft's Bing search engine. They show clicks, impressions and search queries from Bing, report technical problems, accept sitemaps and support the IndexNow protocol, with which new content can be reported immediately.

Bing Webmaster Tools — Explained in Detail

Bing has a considerably smaller market share than Google in Switzerland, but it is often underestimated. Bing is the default on Windows computers and in the Edge browser, and its index serves other services as a data source: Microsoft Copilot relies on Bing, and search engines such as DuckDuckGo and Ecosia partly draw results from Bing. Being well covered by Bing therefore means being present in several places.

Bing Webmaster Tools offer similar functions to Google Search Console: a search performance report with clicks, impressions and queries, URL inspection, submission of XML sitemaps, notices of technical problems and an overview of inbound links. Setting up is particularly easy if the website is already verified in Search Console: Bing can import the verification and the sitemaps from there.

One special feature is IndexNow, an open protocol that Microsoft presented together with Yandex in 2021. Instead of waiting for a crawler to discover a changed page, the website actively reports new or changed URLs to a shared endpoint. Participating search engines, including Bing, Yandex, Seznam and Naver, share these reports with each other. Google does not yet take part in IndexNow. Many systems support IndexNow via plugins or built-in functions.

For Swiss SMEs the effort is small and the benefit solid: once set up, Bing Webmaster Tools provide additional data on search queries and make it visible whether the website is covered by an index that AI assistants also access. That is a small but sensible foundation for GEO.

Setting up in a few steps

Sign in at bing.com/webmasters with a Microsoft, Google or Facebook account, choose the option 'Import from Google Search Console', select the desired websites and confirm. The sitemaps are taken over in the process. Alternatively, the website can be verified via an XML file, a meta tag or a DNS entry.

After a few days, it is worth checking the search performance report and the recommendations section. Bing reports things there such as missing meta descriptions, titles that are too long or blocked resources.

Example: reporting new pages immediately

Our own website has a built-in IndexNow interface for this, so that new and changed pages do not have to wait for Bingbot's next visit. A key on the server proves that the report comes from the domain itself; the interface can collect the URLs from the sitemap and send them to the IndexNow endpoint.

For client websites, we recommend setting up Bing Webmaster Tools at the latest when the site goes live and using IndexNow where the system supports it. This is one of the technical foundations of a new website, which we describe under Have a Website Built. In GEO management, Microsoft Copilot is one of the five platforms we check every month with fixed questions.

Google Search Console

Frequently Asked Questions About Bing Webmaster Tools

It is recommended. Setting it up takes a few minutes via an import from Search Console. You get data on Bing search queries and can see whether your website is covered by the Bing index, which Microsoft Copilot among others draws on.

An open protocol with which a website actively reports new or changed URLs to search engines. Participating search engines such as Bing, Yandex, Seznam and Naver share the reports. Google does not yet take part.

No, Bing Webmaster Tools are free. All you need to sign in is a Microsoft, Google or Facebook account.

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