Installing Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing matters for your visibility in Copilot. Direct import from Google Search Console or manual verification: the steps to get set up.
Bing Webmaster Tools takes a few minutes to set up, with a direct import available straight from Google Search Console — it's the quickest step in this module, and one of the most overlooked, even though it directly affects your visibility inside Copilot.
Why Bing matters for GEO
It's natural to associate Bing with a modest market share compared to Google in classic search. But Bing plays a different role in the generative AI ecosystem: Copilot, Microsoft's assistant, relies in part on Bing's index for its web-search-backed answers. A site that's absent or poorly indexed on Bing has fewer chances of being picked up by that assistant, regardless of its standing on Google. That alone is reason enough not to skip this tool, even if your current Bing traffic looks marginal.
Create an account and add your site
Go to bing.com/webmasters and sign in with a Microsoft account (or create one). Click "Add a site" and enter your domain's URL.
Import directly from Google Search Console
If your site is already verified in Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools offers an import option: you authorize access to your Google account, and Bing automatically pulls in the list of your verified properties, your already-submitted sitemap, and a sample of your performance data. This is by far the fastest method — it skips a new property verification and a new sitemap export.
Verifying ownership if you don't import
If you'd rather verify manually, or your site isn't on Google Search Console yet, three methods are offered:
- HTML meta tag to insert in the
<head>of the homepage. - XML file upload at the site root (similar to Google's HTML file, but in XML format).
- DNS record (CNAME) to add with your registrar, for domain-level verification.
Pick whichever matches your level of access, exactly as with Google Search Console.
Exploring Bing-specific reports
Once the property is active, Bing Webmaster Tools offers reports similar to Google Search Console's (Performance, Crawl, Site Index) but also a few tools of its own:
- SEO Reports, which automatically lists technical issues detected on your pages (missing titles, duplicate meta tags, images without an alt attribute), with no extra setup required.
- URL Inspection, the equivalent of Google's URL inspection, which lets you check how Bingbot sees a specific page and request an on-demand crawl.
- Backlinks, a report listing external links pointing to your site, useful alongside Google Search Console's Links report for cross-referencing both sources.
These reports need less upkeep than Google's, but are worth a monthly check once the tool is set up, particularly the SEO Reports section, which often surfaces simple technical fixes.
Submitting the sitemap and setting the basics
Once the property is verified, go to the "Sitemaps" menu and submit your XML sitemap URL, just like with Google. Then check two useful settings:
- Targeted country/region, in the site settings, if your business is local or national.
- Crawl control, a Bing-specific feature that lets you throttle how often the bot visits if your server has limited resources — only touch this if you're seeing a real impact on server performance.
Setting up Bing Webmaster Tools rounds out the technical tracking foundation started with Google Search Console. With both tools in place, the next step is adding Google Analytics 4 to measure, this time, the traffic actually generated by visitors coming from generative AI.