Bing Webmaster Tools: Setup and the Reports That Actually Matter

Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft’s equivalent of Google Search Console: a free set of reports and tools for seeing how Bing crawls, indexes and shows a site. It covers search performance, indexing diagnostics, sitemaps, backlinks and site audits, and since February 2026 it has an AI Performance report showing how often a site is cited in Microsoft Copilot and in AI-generated summaries in Bing. Setup is shortest for sites already verified in Google Search Console, and a short first audit shows whether Bing sees the site the way Google does.

Feature names and menus change. The descriptions below come from Microsoft’s own Bing Webmaster blog posts from 2025 and 2026; check the interface labels before relying on a specific menu path.

Setup

Microsoft’s getting-started post describes the steps (Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster Tools setup guide):

1. Sign in at Bing Webmaster Tools with a Microsoft, Google or Facebook account.
2. Add the site and verify ownership with one of these methods:

• import the site from Google Search Console, if it is already verified there;
• Domain Connect through supported DNS providers;
• an XML verification file uploaded to the site root;
• a meta tag in the home page <head>;
• a DNS TXT record.

3. Submit sitemaps. Microsoft’s post says Bing processes sitemaps at least once every 24 hours.

1. Set up IndexNow if the CMS or CDN supports it (see below).

Importing from Search Console is the fastest route when available, since it carries verified sites over without separate verification for each.

The reports and tools

Microsoft’s post lists these features:

AI Performance: what it shows and what it does not

Microsoft introduced AI Performance on February 10, 2026 as a public preview that “shows how publisher content appears across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations” (Microsoft’s AI Performance announcement). Its metrics:

• Total citations: how many times the site’s content was shown as a source in AI-generated answers.
• Average cited pages: the average number of unique pages cited per day.
• Grounding query phrases: key phrases the AI used when retrieving content it cited; Microsoft says this is “a sample of overall citation activity”.
• Page-level citations: counts per URL.
• Timeline: citation activity over time.

Microsoft states that these numbers do not indicate ranking, authority or the role of any page within an answer. The announcement describes citations, not clicks; click data for AI answers is not part of what it documents. In October 2026 Microsoft added a beta Topics Portfolio view that groups grounding queries into thematic clusters and lists opportunity queries where other sites are cited and yours is not (Microsoft’s Topics Portfolio announcement).

Controls over how Microsoft uses content for AI are changing separately from these reports. Microsoft announced on October 30, 2026 independent AI Training and AI Grounding preferences that it will honor as it crawls from February 1, 2027, replacing NoArchive and NoCache for those uses. Sites that use NoArchive or NoCache can record a temporary grounding preference in Bing Webmaster Tools from December 15, 2026 and should publish their new preferences before March 1, 2027 (Microsoft’s October 2026 announcement). None of this is in effect in November 2026.

This report covers Microsoft’s AI experiences only. It says nothing about Google’s AI Overviews, which have their own impressions report in Google Search Console, or about other assistants.

IndexNow

IndexNow is an open protocol for notifying participating search engines when URLs are added, updated or deleted, so they can recrawl without waiting for discovery. Bing supports it, and the participant list published at indexnow.org names Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver and others (IndexNow participating search engines). Google is not on that list. Use IndexNow for the engines that support it and keep sitemaps for everyone else, including Google.

A first-audit checklist

Run this once after setup, then at regular intervals:

• [ ] Sitemaps: each sitemap shows a successful status and a discovered URL count close to the expected count.
• [ ] Site Explorer: important sections are indexed; no unexpected crawl blocks or error responses on key paths.
• [ ] URL Inspection: a sample of key pages (home, top categories, top articles) is indexed with the expected canonical.
• [ ] Robots.txt Tester: Bingbot can reach important paths and rendering resources.
• [ ] Site Scan: run a scan; review broken links and duplicate titles.
• [ ] Search Performance: compare top pages and queries with Google Search Console’s Performance report. Large differences point to indexing gaps or different query mixes.
• [ ] Backlinks: review referring domains for anything unexpected.
• [ ] AI Performance: note which pages are cited and for which grounding phrases, as a baseline.
• [ ] Crawl Control: confirm no crawl schedule restricts Bingbot during the hours your content updates.

Interpreting differences from Google

Bing and Google crawl, index and rank independently. A page indexed by Google and missing from Bing (or the reverse) is not an error in either tool; it is a reason to inspect the URL in the engine where it is missing. Technical causes to check for a Bing-only gap include firewall rules that block Bingbot, robots.txt groups that name Googlebot but not Bingbot, and sitemaps submitted only to Google. Bing’s own guidelines and tools are the authority for Bing behavior; avoid assuming Google’s documented rules apply unchanged.

Finding a forgotten Bingbot block

Say a B2B site has good Google visibility and almost no Bing traffic.

• Setup: site imported from Google Search Console; sitemaps submitted.
• Site Explorer: most URLs show as discovered but not indexed.
• Robots.txt Tester: a group added years ago contains User-agent: bingbot with Disallow: / from a staging copy.
• Fix: remove the rule; enable IndexNow through the CMS plugin.
• Follow-up: over the following weeks, check URL Inspection for key pages and Search Performance for the first impressions.
• Limitation: indexing and ranking remain Bing’s decisions; the fix removes the barrier, it does not guarantee traffic.

Bing Webmaster Tools is worth the setup time for a site that wants search traffic beyond Google, and its AI Performance report gives a first-party view of how often Microsoft’s AI answers cite the site.