Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft's console for seeing how Bing crawls, indexes and ranks a website, and since February 2026 it also shows how often your pages are cited as a source in Copilot answers. In the UK, searches for "bing webmaster tools" rose from 4,400 a month in late 2025 to 8,100 a month from May to September 2026 (Google Ads data via DataForSEO, checked on 28 October 2026), and the jump lines up with the launch of that second report.
Most guides on page one still describe it as "Bing's Search Console", and many predate that report: in Google UK results on 28 October 2026, Neil Patel's guide is dated December 2023 and HawkSEM's April 2021. In Italy we read the eight most visible guides and none covers the AI Performance report.
So why should you care now?
Because on our own site, over 29 days of server logs, Bingbot made 6,425 requests against Googlebot's 2,327. Almost three times as many. And because, checking the setup, we found that IndexNow had been "on" without ever sending a single URL.
On client projects we always start from the data. Macropix, which makes custom LED screens, reached first place in Italy for "ledwall" (4,400 searches a month) by building one page per product line, as we explain in our guide to manufacturing SEO. Sunscape went from 329 to 5,809 organic impressions a month in six months, with the steps set out in how long SEO takes.
In this guide:
- what Bing Webmaster Tools shows that Search Console does not, in one table;
- the numbers from our logs: who reaches a new article first, Bingbot or Googlebot;
- IndexNow as the official documentation describes it, and the setup mistake we had made too;
- the AI Performance report: what it measures about Copilot citations and what it leaves out.
What is Bing Webmaster Tools (and what it shows that Search Console doesn't)
Bing Webmaster Tools is where a site owner verifies the domain with Bing, submits sitemaps, checks crawl errors and reads clicks and impressions from Bing. So far it is the twin of Google Search Console.
The differences come down to four features.
| Feature | Bing Webmaster Tools | Google Search Console |
|---|---|---|
| Citations in AI answers | AI Performance report: citations in Copilot, Bing's AI summaries and some partners (since 10 February 2026) | No separate report for AI Overviews or AI Mode |
| Instant notice of new or changed pages | IndexNow, an open protocol shared with other engines | Google does not take part in IndexNow |
| Ownership verification | Can import sites already verified in Search Console | File, meta tag, DNS, Analytics, Tag Manager |
| Keyword research and backlinks | Built into the tool | Not available |
One more change for anyone using it through code: Microsoft retired the legacy SOAP and POX Bing Webmaster APIs on 31 August 2026, and integrations built on them have to move to the REST APIs (Microsoft Learn documentation, updated 7 August 2026).
Why Bing matters for Copilot (and much less, now, for ChatGPT)
Bing matters because Copilot relies on its index: the Copilot Studio documentation says agents "access the web via Bing APIs" and search "public websites indexed by Bing" (Microsoft Learn, updated 1 February 2026). A page that is not in Bing's index cannot be cited by Copilot.
ChatGPT is a different story. OpenAI is moving its answers onto its own index, and the evidence is in our Google vs Bing comparison, so we won't repeat it here.
On 6 May 2026 three Microsoft AI product leads wrote that the role of Bing's index is changing: "Search optimizes for likelihood of relevance. Grounding must measure strength of evidence." In plain terms, being relevant is not enough to appear in an AI answer: you need a page that carries evidence.
How to set up Bing Webmaster Tools (and the shortcut if you use Search Console)
Setup takes four steps, and the longest becomes one click if the site is already verified with Google. The order follows Bing's official post of 17 June 2025:
- Sign in. Go to bing.com/webmasters and log in with a Microsoft, Google or Facebook account.
- Verify. The quickest route is importing ownership from Search Console. Otherwise: Domain Connect, an XML file in the root, a meta tag on the homepage or a DNS TXT record.
- Sitemap. Submit it in the Sitemaps section or list it in robots.txt. Bing says it processes sitemaps "at least once every 24 hours".
- IndexNow. Switch it on in your CMS or with a plugin. Check this one twice: you'll see why in a moment.
Bing is stricter about sitemaps than most people assume. In its post of 31 July 2025 it asks for lastmod to show the real date the content last changed, not the date the file was generated, and says it ignores changefreq and priority. The rest is in our XML sitemap guide.
Bingbot vs Googlebot on our site (29 days of logs, no IndexNow)
Bingbot reached 22 of 30 new articles before Googlebot, with a median delay of 3.6 hours after publication against 8.9. We measured this in the server access logs of visilay.com from 29 September to 28 October 2026: 231,378 lines after removing duplicates.
| Measure (visilay.com, 29 Sep - 28 Oct 2026) | Bingbot | Googlebot |
|---|---|---|
| Total requests | 6,425 | 2,327 |
| Distinct URLs visited | 1,452 | 1,086 |
| Sitemap requests | 195 | 40 |
| 404 responses received | 333 | 80 |
| New articles visited within 6 hours (of 32) | 21 | 4 |
| Median delay to first visit | 3.6 hours | 8.9 hours |
| Articles first visited after more than 3 days | 5 | 3 |
So is Bing faster than Google?
On the first visit, yes, but the median hides a long tail. Bingbot only found four articles after 12 to 13 days (between 295 and 316 hours), all published on 14 October and three of them English versions. On the same day, from the same sitemap, the Italian guide to how much YouTube pays was visited after 12 minutes.
That gap is exactly what IndexNow is meant to close. On our site, it stayed open.
The 404s are worth a look too: 333 Bingbot requests hit pages that do not exist, against 80 for Googlebot. 89 were addresses under /services/ and 25 under /company/ that are no longer live: Bing keeps asking for them, and Bing Webmaster Tools is where you see them listed. If you are planning a platform change, put them in the redirect map for your website migration.
What IndexNow actually does (and why ours never fired)
IndexNow is an open protocol that lets a site tell search engines a URL has been added, updated or deleted, instead of waiting for a crawl. According to the official FAQ, a submission to any participating engine "will be shared across all IndexNow-enabled search engines": the endpoints listed today are the protocol's global one, Amazon, Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex and Yep.
Google is not on the list. IndexNow does nothing for Google Search, as we explain in our guide to Google indexing.
The technical rules, from the documentation:
- a key of 8 to 128 characters, published in a .txt file at the root of the domain;
- up to 10,000 URLs per POST request;
- a 200 response only means "received": "Submitting a URL does not guarantee immediate indexing";
- no rapid-fire resubmissions: the FAQ asks you to wait at least 5 minutes between updates, and 10 after a 429 error.
Now our mistake.
In the Yoast SEO settings on visilay.com, IndexNow showed as enabled, with a key already generated. We requested the key file from the server: 404. The plugin code explains why: in the free version the feature is flagged "premium". The switch is there, the key is there, the submission isn't.
So the numbers in the table above were collected without IndexNow: Bing found the articles through the sitemap, which it requested 195 times in 29 days.
On WordPress there are two ways to make it work: Yoast SEO Premium, or the IndexNow plugin built by the Bing Webmaster team (100,000+ active installs, version 1.0.4), which generates and hosts the key itself. Shopify, Wix and Duda build it into the platform. Either way the check is the same: open https://yourdomain/key.txt and make sure it loads.
A switch that says "on" is not a signal that was sent.
On our site IndexNow showed as enabled and the key file returned 404. In our audits we open the server logs, check what Bingbot, Googlebot and the AI bots actually read, and tell you which pages are left out and why.
Book a strategy callThe AI Performance report: Copilot citations (without the clicks)
The AI Performance report counts how often a site's pages are shown as a source in AI-generated answers in Microsoft Copilot, Bing's AI summaries and "select partner integrations". Microsoft opened it as a public preview on 10 February 2026, and it is the first AI citation data a search engine has made available to site owners.
| Metric | What it measures | Added |
|---|---|---|
| Total Citations | Times the site appears as a source in AI answers | February 2026 |
| Average Cited Pages | Daily average of unique pages cited | February 2026 |
| Grounding queries | The phrases the AI used to retrieve the pages (a sample) | February 2026 |
| Page-level citation activity | Citations per URL | February 2026 |
| Intents, Topics, Citation Share, Compare | Type of question, topic groups, share of citations for the same query, period comparison | 16 June 2026 |
| Topics Portfolio (beta) | Topics where the site is cited, plus "Opportunity Queries" where other sites are cited and yours is not | 13 October 2026 |
Microsoft states the limits itself, and they are worth reading before the numbers:
- no clicks: the report counts citations, not how many people reached the site;
- grounding queries are a sample, not the full list;
- Citation Share is "an observational metric – not a ranking system": it shows no competitor domains and is not a traffic share;
- Topics Portfolio only appears when there is enough data for the site.
What about ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews?
Not covered. The report only sees Microsoft surfaces. For the rest you need separate tracking on prompts you choose, as we set out in our guide to AI visibility: that is the job of our AI Monitoring service and of ScryRank, the monitoring tool developed by Visilay. Which numbers to watch is covered in AI visibility metrics; for Google, see how to track Google AI Mode.
What it changes for visibility in AI answers (beyond Copilot)
Among search engine tools, Bing Webmaster Tools is currently the only one that shows a business which questions led an AI to its pages. Grounding queries are the same long questions people put to Copilot, AI Mode and ChatGPT: reading them tells you which pages to write, including for the platforms the report does not cover.
Bing's official advice for being cited is in the February post: fresh content (with IndexNow), clear headings, tables and FAQs, claims backed by data and sources. None of it promises a citation. Our own study of the sources AI answers cite points the same way: the pages chosen are the ones holding the exact figure the question asks for.
One step comes before all of this: let the bots in. If robots.txt blocks Bingbot, or a firewall treats it as suspicious traffic, the AI Performance report will stay empty. Which bots visit a business website, and which to block, is in our piece on AI crawlers.
When Bing Webmaster Tools is worth your time (and when ten minutes is enough)
Bing's share of searches varies a lot by market and device, and the figures for each are in our Google vs Bing comparison. But the tool earns its place even when Bing traffic is small: our logs show Bingbot covering more URLs than Googlebot (1,452 against 1,086), so it finds problems sooner, including old addresses that return 404.
Open it now if:
- you sell to companies that work in Microsoft 365 and Copilot;
- you publish or update pages every week and want IndexNow engines to see them straight away;
- you have recently changed site and want to know which old URLs Bing still requests;
- you want a first read on AI citations without setting up anything else.
For a brochure site updated twice a year, verification and a monthly check are enough: the real work stays on the pages, through SEO and GEO.
Frequently asked questions about Bing Webmaster Tools and IndexNow
No. You only need a Microsoft, Google or Facebook account and a verified site. Every report, including AI Performance, is included.
Yes. Search Console does not show Copilot citations, does not receive IndexNow and does not see errors that only Bingbot finds: on our site, in 29 days, Bingbot got 333 404 responses against Googlebot's 80. Verification takes a few steps if you import your sites from Search Console.
No. Google does not take part in the protocol. The endpoints listed in the official FAQ are IndexNow's global one, Amazon, Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex and Yep, which share submitted URLs with each other.
It depends: only Yoast SEO Premium does. In the free version the option can show as enabled without sending anything, as it did for us: the key file returned 404. With the free version you can use the IndexNow plugin from the Bing Webmaster team.
No. It covers Microsoft Copilot, Bing AI summaries and some partner integrations that Microsoft does not name. For ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews you need separate tracking on prompts you choose.
It depends: across the 30 new visilay.com articles both bots visited, Bingbot's median delay was 3.6 hours against Googlebot's 8.9, but four articles waited 12 to 13 days. Without IndexNow the timing stays unpredictable.
Summary (in five lines)
Bing Webmaster Tools is Bing's Search Console, plus Copilot citations.
Setup takes four steps, and verification is one click if you import from Search Console.
On our new articles, Bingbot arrived before Googlebot 22 times out of 30.
IndexNow does nothing for Google, and you check it by opening the key file.
The AI Performance report counts citations, not clicks.
One last thing, and it applies to any tool: check the log, not the switch. A plugin's settings page tells you what should happen; the server log tells you what does. For us the difference was a 404 on a file holding a 100-character key.
