Set Up and Use Bing Webmaster Tools
Also known as: Bing SEO, Bing Crawl Optimization, Microsoft Search Optimization
Set up and actively manage Bing Webmaster Tools, since Copilot draws on Bing's index and its AI Performance report shows citations in Copilot and Bing AI summaries.
What is Set Up and Use Bing Webmaster Tools?
- Impact Mechanism:
- RAG & Retrieval
- Category:
- Technical & Schema
- Effort:
- Low
- Skill needed:
- Technical & Dev
- Evidence level:
- Proven
How does it work?
1. Add and verify your site
At bing.com/webmasters choose My Sites > Import and allow Google Search Console access, or verify with a meta tag, XML file or DNS record.
2. Submit a sitemap with true lastmod
Submit it in Bing Webmaster Tools or via a 'Sitemap:' line in robots.txt; set lastmod to the real content change, ISO 8601 with time.
3. Turn on IndexNow for changes
Notify IndexNow whenever a URL is added, updated or deleted; Bing pairs it with sitemaps for freshness (setup: see the IndexNow strategy).
4. Fix errors with Site Scan, URL Inspection
Run Site Scan ('Start new scan') for technical errors, and use URL Inspection's Live URL tab to see the HTML Bingbot gets, then request indexing.
5. Check AI Performance for Copilot citations
Open the AI Performance report (public preview) and track total citations, cited pages and grounding queries for Copilot and Bing AI answers monthly.