Bing Webmaster Tools: Features and Setup

Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft’s platform for site owners to monitor how their website performs in Bing. It plays the same role as Google Search Console does for Google.

What does it offer?

Bing’s help pages describe these main functions, among others:

Site verification and sitemaps. A verified site can submit a sitemap.
URL submission and IndexNow. Pages can be reported to Bing manually or through the IndexNow protocol.
Import from Google Search Console. Sites already verified there can be brought over.
SEO tools for backlink analysis, keyword research and SEO errors. According to Bing’s checklist, SEO reports run automatically every other week for verified domains.

For manual URL submission, Bing now recommends IndexNow and notes that URL and content submission may be deprecated in the future.

The URL Inspection tool, introduced in September 2020, shows when a URL was discovered, crawled and indexed. It checks about 15 SEO best practices, validates markup, and offers a live check that tests crawlability without requesting indexing.

API access

Data can be retrieved through the Bing Webmaster API. Microsoft describes two ways to authenticate, OAuth 2.0 (recommended) and an API key. One key exists per user and works for all sites that user has verified.

Example

A shop that has verified its site in Google Search Console imports the property into Bing Webmaster Tools, submits its XML sitemap and runs the URL Inspection tool on a product page that Bing has not indexed.

FAQ

Is Bing Webmaster Tools free? Yes. Bing’s getting-started checklist says to open a free Bing Webmaster Tools account.

Should I connect my site to Bing? Bing has its own index and crawler, so errors that affect only Bing show up only there. Whether the effort pays off depends on how much traffic comes from Bing.

Sources

Last updated: October 7, 2026