Bing and Yahoo! searches use Bing search engine for indexing and crawling the web content. Bing has over 15% of the search engine market share in US with increasing user base. When you have a new website, we recommend submitting the site to Bing to improve the search results in Bing and Yahoo! search results. This will help to drive traffic especially when you are not able to get traffic from Google search. In order to submit your site to Bing search engine, Microsoft offers a dedicated set of Webmaster Tools.
Registering for Bing Webmaster Tools
You can use your Microsoft, Google or Facebook account for registering with Bing Webmasters Tools. Microsoft also offers $500 free advertising coupon code for new webmasters signing up for webmaster tools account (you need to spend $250 to get $500 free). So, you can simply register and use the coupon to drive initial traffic.
Adding Your Site
After login to your account, the first thing is to add your site. You can find this option on top left corner of the screen.
You can either import the site from Google Search Console or manually add it. Importing option is the best as you do not need separate verification and your Sitemaps will be automatically added in Bing Webmaster Tools account. However, if you do not want to link Google account, then go for a manual submission option.
Verifying Ownership
After adding the site’s URL manually, you will be shown with various verification methods.
- Placing an XML file on your web server.
- Copy & paste meta tag.
- Add CNAME record to DNS.
The meta tag option is an easier way as it does not need the root access to your hosting server or DNS setup. So, expand “HTML Meta Tag” section and copy the code. You should paste this meta tag in your site’s header area and click on “Verify” button. You can check under “User management” section to make sure your site is verified successfully. Learn more about adding and verifying site in Bing Webmaster Tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools Features
Bing in competition with Google Webmaster Tools offers various high-end tools for optimizing and improving your site ranking in search results page. All options are accessible from the left sidebar.
There are also option on top right corner for using Copilot to get insights and accessing “Settings” for connecting your Google account or changing the language. Below are some of the important actions you can do in Bing Webmaster Tools:
- Submit XML Sitemap.
- Submit or block URLs.
- Control bingbot crawl rate.
- Do basic keyword research.
- URL inspection of any page on your site.
- Manage users.
- Monitor performance.
Sitemap Submission
Go to “Sitemaps” section from the sidebar and click on the “Submit sitemap” button. Submit your XML Sitemap to inform Bing search engine about all your web pages and the structure of your site.
You can also submit your blog’s RSS feed to update Bing search engine about the latest posts on your blog. After submission the status will be pending and Bing may take few days to a week time for checking and indexing the submitted pages in database. The status will be changed to “Success” once submitted pages are indexed successfully.
URL Inspection & URL Submission
These are similar tools used for submitting modified or updated pages on your site. Since search engines takes longer time to crawl and index the updated content, you can use these tools to crawl the latest content and submit to Bing.
- URL Inspection – allows you to check the errors and submit the page.
- URL Submission – allows you to bulk submit the pages without an option to inspect the technical details.
The daily combined limit for submission is 10,000 URLs and the limit will be reset on each day as per GMT timezone. However, you can only find the last 1000 submitted URLs in the history list.
Note: You can also use IndexNow feature to automatically submit your new and modified pages. There is an official IndexNow plugin available for WordPress sites, otherwise, you can use Cloudflare or manual setup.
Backlinks and Keyword Research
Go to “Backlinks” section to monitor the number of inbound and outbound links to your site and you can monitor the popular search terms under the “Keywords Research” section. These traditional metrics are not much of importance after the introduction of AI search results (using Copilot).
Crawl Control and URL Blocking
Generally, it is not required to control the crawling rate of Bingbot unless you want to reduce the bot crawling during peak time. Go to “Configuration > Crawl Control” section and select “Custom” option for the time. Now, you can customize the crawl rate in the graph as per your preference of reach hour.
Use “Block URLs” option if you want to remove a specific page from Bing search and block Bingbot from indexing the page.
Monitoring Performance
Once Bing accumulated the required data, it will be shown under various section. Go to “Site Performance” section to monitor the overall clicks, impressions and click through rate for various time frames (from 7 days to 16 months or use custom time frame). You can also find the popular keywords and pages under the same section. Go to “Site Explorer” section to find the crawl information along with popular pages (with clicks and impressions).
Go to “Recommendations” section to find the crawl and indexing errors on your site. Bing will show all errors nicely categorized under High, Moderate and Low tabs. Click the error message to find the URL details and from there you can directly do the URL Inspection and resubmit the pages (make sure you have fixed the error before submitting).
Additional Features
Here are some of the additional things you can do in Bing Webmaster Tools account:
- Robots.txt Tester – check your current robots.txt file for errors.
- Verify Bingbot – if you suspect some unknown crawlers are scraping your content, use this tool to verify whether it is a Bing’s IP address or not.
- User Management – add additional users to manage your account.
- Copyright Removal Notices – under this section, you can check any DMCA take down claims against your pages and take necessary action.
Final Words
Adding your site and submitting Sitemap are the important tasks you should do in Bing Webmaster Tools account. Once done, the performance, keywords and crawl monitoring are regular tasks you can do it once in a week or as and when required (like fixing errors and submitting updated pages). All the available tools are completely free and you can also use the Copilot AI assistant within Bing Webmaster account for getting instant help.
