Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft’s free console for site owners: the Bing search console where you verify a site, submit sitemaps, see how Bing indexes you, and push new pages with IndexNow. Since 2026 it also does something Google Search Console does not: it counts how often Microsoft’s AI answers cite you.
What Bing Webmaster Tools is
It is Bing’s counterpart to Google Search Console. The share it serves is small worldwide but not in every market: StatCounter put Bing at 12.82% of US desktop search in August 2026[5]. More important now, Bing’s index is what Microsoft Copilot searches when it grounds an answer, so a page Bing has not indexed cannot be cited there. The Copilot SEO guide covers that side.
How to set up Bing Webmaster Tools
How to submit your site to Bing
There are three ways to submit a site to Bing, from slowest to fastest: let Bingbot find you through links, submit a sitemap in Bing Webmaster Tools, or submit URLs directly, either with the URL submission tool in the console or through IndexNow. Whichever you use, Bing SEO starts with Bingbot being able to crawl you. Bingbot identifies itself with a user agent containing “bingbot/2.0”, with separate desktop and mobile variants since 2022; because user agents can be faked, Bing offers a tool to verify it[4]. Make sure your robots.txt lets it in: the robots.txt tester shows the line that decides.
IndexNow, step by step
IndexNow “lets you submit URLs immediately when content is added, updated, or deleted”. The listed participating engines are Amazon, Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex and Yep, and a submission to one “will be shared across all IndexNow-enabled search engines”. The key is 8 to 128 characters of letters, numbers and hyphens, hosted as a text file named after the key at your site’s root[1]. Build yours here:
Most CMSes can do it for you: WordPress has IndexNow plugins, and CDNs such as Cloudflare offer it as a setting. If you publish with CoreCited, CMS publishing sends drafts to your CMS, and your CMS’s own IndexNow setting takes over when you press publish.
The AI Performance report
Introduced in February 2026 as a public preview, the report shows how your content is cited across “Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations”[2]. In June 2026 Bing added intents, topics, citation share and a compare view[3].
| What it tells you | Since | |
|---|---|---|
| Total citations | How often your pages were cited in AI answers | Feb 2026 |
| Average cited pages | How many of your pages are cited on average | Feb 2026 |
| Grounding queries | A sample of the searches AI answers ran that cited you | Feb 2026 |
| Page-level citations | Which pages are cited, and how often | Feb 2026 |
| Intents and topics | What kinds of questions led to your citations | Jun 2026 |
| Citation share | Your share of all citations for a grounding query | Jun 2026 |
| Clicks | ✕No | Not shown |
Bing describes citation share as “an observational metric, not a ranking system or a competitive scoreboard”[3]. To see AI citations across the other assistants too, CoreCited’s citation analysis records the sources Perplexity and Google’s AI features cite for your buyers’ questions.
Bing Webmaster Tools vs Google Search Console
| Bing Webmaster Tools | Google Search Console | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Sitemaps and URL inspection | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
| Instant URL submission | IndexNow and URL submission | Request indexing, a few a day |
| AI answer reporting | Citations in Copilot and Bing AI | Impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode |
| Import the other's sites | Yes, from Search Console | ✕No |
For AI visits, see measuring AI traffic in GA4. For Google’s AI features, the AI Overview checker shows what Google cites for any query.
Questions people ask
Is Bing Webmaster Tools free?
Yes. Bing Webmaster Tools is free with a Microsoft account. It covers indexing, search performance, sitemaps, URL submission, crawl information and, since February 2026, an AI Performance report for citations in Copilot.
What is the Bing equivalent of Google Search Console?
Bing Webmaster Tools. It does the same core jobs, verifying a site, submitting sitemaps and showing search performance, and adds IndexNow submission and a report of citations in Microsoft's AI answers, which Search Console does not have.
How do I submit my site to Bing?
Add and verify the site in Bing Webmaster Tools, submit your XML sitemap, and use IndexNow or the URL submission tool for new and changed pages. Bing then crawls the site itself.
What is IndexNow?
An open protocol for telling search engines a URL was added, updated or deleted. You host a key file on your site and send the URLs; a submission to one participating engine is shared with the others, which include Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam and Yep. Google is not a listed participant.
Does IndexNow work with Google?
Google is not among the search engines IndexNow lists as participating, so use Search Console and your sitemap for Google.
What does the AI Performance report show?
How often your site is cited in Microsoft Copilot, Bing's AI summaries and some partner integrations: total citations, average cited pages, sample grounding queries and page-level citations, plus intents, topics and citation share since June 2026. It shows citations, not clicks.