Bing Webmaster Tools Is the New Google Search Console: The AI Indexing Guide

For years, many SEO plans treated Bing as an afterthought. AI search is a good reason to change that, but keep the claim precise: Bing is a major gateway to AI search, not the only one. OpenAI's help page says ChatGPT search "sometimes partners with other search providers", and the only provider privacy policies it links are Microsoft's and Shopify's. OpenAI also runs its own crawler, OAI-SearchBot, for ChatGPT search. So a page Bing has indexed gets one more door into ChatGPT, while OpenAI's crawler keeps its own door.

Microsoft is leaning into that role. Jordi Ribas, its corporate vice president for Search and AI, wrote in February 2026 that Microsoft grounding "powers nearly every major AI assistant in the market." The public Bing Search APIs were retired on 11 August 2025, and Microsoft pointed developers to Grounding with Bing Search instead. Two days before the grounding post, Bing Webmaster Tools gained a report that counts AI citations.

This guide maps Search Console to Bing Webmaster Tools, gives you a first-hour setup checklist, shows how to monitor Bing crawl frequency, and ends with a weekly routine for AI visibility. For how Copilot picks and shows its sources, read our Copilot SEO guide.

Why Bing Webmaster Tools Is the Control Panel for AI Search

A control panel lets you see what a system sees, change what goes in, and read what comes out. Bing Webmaster Tools does all three for Bing's index: it shows the HTML Bingbot fetched, takes new URLs through sitemaps and IndexNow, sets how fast Bingbot crawls, and counts AI citations.

Bing's rules now say this out loud. The Bing Webmaster Guidelines cover "Bing search experiences, Copilot, and grounding API results," and list "grounding results and citations" among the rewards for following them. The same page says Bing and Copilot "rely on the same core crawling, indexing, and ranking foundation as traditional search." Grounding, in this sense, means the web pages an AI system retrieves to support its answer.

The AI products that draw on Bing's index

The rows come from DuckDuckGo's help page, Yahoo Help, Microsoft's Grounding with Bing Search docs and the June 2026 Web IQ launch, which calls Web IQ "a suite of AI-native grounding APIs" built on Bing's index. A June 2025 Bing post also lists "AI tools like ChatGPT and Inflection.ai" among the products Bing powers.

What Bing can't do for you

1. ChatGPT also crawls for itself. OpenAI's crawler docs say OAI-SearchBot "is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features." Block it and your pages leave ChatGPT's answers, however well Bing knows them. They can still show up as plain navigational links. No setting in Bing Webmaster Tools feeds OpenAI's own index; OAI-SearchBot builds that. Our ChatGPT SEO guide covers that side.
2. Some engines skip Bing. Perplexity runs its own index, and Google runs its own. Work in Bing does nothing for either.
3. Being indexed isn't ranking for the prompt. In Ahrefs' August 2025 study of 15,000 prompts, about 10% of AI citations overlapped with Bing's top 10 for the same query. ChatGPT and Gemini showed the least overlap. AI assistants search many versions of each question, so Bing indexing gets you into the pool. It doesn't pick you.

Search Console vs Bing Webmaster Tools: The Feature Map

The two consoles do most of the same jobs under different names. This table lines them up, so you can find your way on day one.

Sources: Google's pages on Crawl stats, Removals, the Search generative AI control, the crawl rate tool and the generative AI reports, and the Bing Webmaster Tools help center.

Does submitting to Bing Webmaster Tools help Google indexing?

No. Bing and Google keep separate indexes. The Search Console import runs one way only: it copies your verified sites and sitemaps from Google into Bing. Google isn't on IndexNow's list of participating engines either. For Google, use URL Inspection for a few URLs and a sitemap for many. Google says crawling "can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks."

The First-Hour Setup Checklist

This is how to use Bing Webmaster Tools for SEO and AI search at once, in about an hour. Do the first block today, even if the rest waits. Bing's help says data collection starts when you add the site, so "you cannot see backdated data."

Minutes 0 to 10: add and verify the site

1. Sign in at bing.com/webmasters. A Microsoft, Google or Facebook account works.
2. Import from Google Search Console if you can. You grant access, pick your sites, and Bing verifies them automatically. It brings your sitemaps across and keeps pulling in new ones when it rechecks ownership. Your Google performance history stays behind.
3. Otherwise, add the site by hand. Bing's help lists four methods: DNS auto verification through Domain Connect, the BingSiteAuth.xml file, a meta tag, or a CNAME record in DNS. Leave the tag or file in place after it works.

Minutes 10 to 20: sitemaps

1. Submit your sitemap. Open Sitemaps and use the Submit sitemaps button at the top right. Also add a Sitemap: line to robots.txt.
2. Make lastmod honest. Bing calls lastmod "a key signal" for recrawls, wants ISO 8601 date and time, and ignores changefreq and priority. Keep each file to 50,000 URLs or fewer.
3. Check the last read date. Bing fetches a new sitemap right away, then "typically at least once per day."

Minutes 20 to 35: IndexNow

1. Open the IndexNow tab first. Its Sources section shows whether a plugin or CDN already sends pings for you, such as WordPress, Shopify or Cloudflare.
2. If nothing is sending, switch it on. Use your platform's built-in option, or host a key file and call the API. The IndexNow section below has the details.

Minutes 35 to 50: access and AI controls

1. Test your key URLs as Bingbot. The Robots.txt Tester checks a URL against your file and shows the line that blocks it. Our free robots.txt tester runs the same check for other bots.
2. Check your firewall. A burst of 403s served to Bingbot triggers a crawl error alert. Use the Verify Bingbot tool, under Tools & Enhancements, to confirm an IP before you allow or block it.
3. Audit the tags that limit Copilot. Bing's robots meta tags give three of them an AI effect:

Both noarchive and nocache also opt a page out of Microsoft's AI training, in full or in part. Check that nobody added them for that reason to pages you want quoted, in HTML or in X-Robots-Tag headers. A page with both is treated as nocache. The Copilot guide explains the trade-offs in full.

Minutes 50 to 60: baselines

1. Inspect five money pages. In URL Inspection, confirm each one is indexed. Then open the Live URL tab, which shows "exactly what the Bingbot sees," and check your key facts are in that HTML.
2. Turn on email alerts. In Settings, switch on Receive Communication, so crawl and index alerts reach your inbox.
3. Note today's date. Reports take about 48 hours to fill. If AI Performance shows no grounding queries yet, Bing says that is expected with sparse citations and "does not indicate a penalty or exclusion."

IndexNow: What It Does for Bing, and for ChatGPT

IndexNow is an open protocol for telling search engines a URL was added, changed or deleted. Bing's guidelines ask for it by name, and Bing's URL Submission help page says the older manual and API routes "may be deprecated in the future" as IndexNow spreads.

How the protocol works

You create a key of 8 to 128 characters and host it as a text file on your site. Then you send changed URLs, up to 10,000 per request, to any participating engine. The IndexNow docs say engines "agree that submitted URLs will be automatically shared with all other participating search engines." As of September 2026 the participants are Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver, Yep, the Internet Archive and Amazonbot.

# Send one changed URL with a POST (replace the key and URLs)
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" -X POST "https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" \
  -d '{"host":"www.example.com","key":"YOUR_KEY","keyLocation":"https://www.example.com/YOUR_KEY.txt","urlList":["https://www.example.com/pricing"]}'

A 200 means only that the engine received the URL. A 202 on your first request means your key is still being checked. That key file is how IndexNow verifies you: it proves you control the host. The IndexNow tab then confirms which URLs Bing received. Neither step has a documented link to ChatGPT.

Bing's guidelines prefer a ping per change, sent as it happens, over big batches, because "streaming submissions provide faster updates." A ping doesn't guarantee a crawl, and the IndexNow FAQ says each submitted URL counts toward your crawl quota.

Reading the IndexNow tab

The IndexNow report in Bing Webmaster Tools is where pings become evidence. It shows:

• URLs submitted, crawled and indexed, by date, in the complete report.
• A sample list of submitted URLs. Each one opens a side panel with crawl status, crawl time, index status and first indexed time.
• Late submission, which marks URLs that got indexed through another source, such as a sitemap.
• Important URLs Missed, a list of important URLs indexed in the last seven days that never came through IndexNow. Each one points to a page your pings skipped.
• Reasons pages weren't indexed, such as Content Quality, Canonical URL Exists, No-Index Tag, Robots Disallowed and Not Crawled.

Does IndexNow help ChatGPT?

The accurate answer is: indirectly, sometimes. No OpenAI or Microsoft document says IndexNow switches on ChatGPT discovery, and OpenAI isn't an IndexNow participant. What the documents do say fits together like this:

• IndexNow gets your change to Bing fast. Microsoft says it helps ensure "AI systems reference the most current version of a page."
• Microsoft is one of the search providers ChatGPT search can send queries to.
• So when ChatGPT goes through that provider path, a fresh Bing copy is the version that path can return.

The other path needs nothing from Bing. OpenAI's own crawler reads your pages directly, and OpenAI's publisher FAQ says "Any public website can appear in ChatGPT search." Keep OAI-SearchBot allowed and ping IndexNow. Each covers a path the other doesn't. For both engines' access rules side by side, see our guide to optimizing for ChatGPT and Perplexity.

How to Monitor Bing Crawl Frequency

Google has one Crawl stats page. Bing Webmaster Tools spreads the same story across four reports.

Sources: Bing's help pages on Search Performance, Site Explorer, crawl error alerts and Crawl Control.

Measure recrawl lag

What matters for AI answers is how long a change takes to reach Bing's index. We call this the recrawl lag: the hours between your IndexNow ping and Bingbot's next fetch of that URL. The submitted URLs list and its side panel show both times, so you can read it without logs.

Here is an illustrative example. You update five pages and ping each one. The lags come back as 2, 5, 7, 26 and 49 hours. Sorted, the middle value is 7, so your median recrawl lag is 7 hours. The two slow URLs are the ones to open in URL Inspection.

Bing's guidelines say crawl capacity is allocated by "site health, efficiency, signal quality, and crawl value." If your lag grows, look for waste first. Duplicate URLs, endless filter parameters and redirect chains all use crawls that your new pages need.

Use Crawl Control instead of blocking

Crawl Control lets you slow Bingbot during your busiest hours and let it run faster at night. Pick a preset for your peak hours, or drag the hourly blocks up or down, then save. One catch: a crawl-delay line in robots.txt "will always take precedence" over these settings. Delete it if you want Crawl Control to work.

Don't answer heavy crawling with a firewall block. Bing's 403 alert says your server "is denying access to your pages to Bingbot," and its advice is to set hourly rates in Crawl Control "instead of blocking requests." A blocked Bingbot can't refresh the facts that Copilot quotes.

Check your server logs too

Your logs show every Bingbot fetch, not a sample. Two commands cover the basics for logs in the common combined format:

# Bingbot requests per day, oldest first
grep -i "bingbot" access.log | awk '{print substr($4, 2, 11)}' | uniq -c
 
# The last time Bingbot fetched your pricing page
grep -i "bingbot" access.log | grep '"GET /pricing ' | tail -1 | awk '{print $4}'

Anyone can fake a user agent, so check busy IPs with the Verify Bingbot tool before you trust the counts. If you'd rather not use a terminal, our free AI crawler log analyzer reads a day of logs in your browser.

Reading the AI Performance Report

AI Performance launched in public preview in February 2026. It counts citations across three surfaces: Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and "select partner AI integrations." Microsoft doesn't say who the partners are.

The core numbers

The AI Performance help page defines each view:

• Total Citations: how many times your content was shown as a source in AI answers during the date range.
• Cited pages and Average cited pages: unique pages cited per day, and the daily average across the range.
• Grounding queries: short phrases the AI used to retrieve your content. Bing calls them "grouped representations," not users' prompts.
• Pages: citation counts per URL.
• Grounding Query–Page mapping: pick a query to see its cited pages, or a page to see its queries. You can filter by one at a time, and exports follow the filter.

Date ranges run 7 days, 30 days, 3 months or custom. Data refreshes daily, and you can export to CSV or Excel.

What the June 2026 update added

On 16 June 2026 Bing began rolling out four preview features:

• Intents label each grounding query, with classes such as Informational, Commercial, Comparison, Local, Planning and Research.
• Topics group related grounding queries into themes, such as solar energy.
• Citation Share is your slice of all the citations shown for one grounding query. In an illustrative case, if "project tools for agencies" drew 50 citations across all sites and 6 were yours, your share is 12%.
• Compare draws a past period as a dashed line next to the current period's solid line.

Citation Share never names the other sites. Bing calls it "an observational metric," not a ranking or a scoreboard.

Five limits to keep in mind

1. It's a sample. Bing says low or rare citation activity "may not surface," and totals can differ between views.
2. Citations aren't clicks. Bing's FAQ answers "Do citations represent clicks or traffic?" with a plain "No."
3. It can't isolate ChatGPT. Surfaces are pooled and the partners are unnamed, so read it as a Copilot and Bing view.
4. It shows no rivals. You see your share, never who holds the rest.
5. It can't prove cause. Bing says Compare "does not explain why the change happened."

For the parts Bing can't see, run your own prompt panel. Our guide to measuring GEO explains how to set one up and how many runs you need.

The Crawl-to-Citation Ladder

The reports above answer separate questions. The crawl-to-citation ladder puts them in order, so you can see where pages fall off. Each rung is a step a URL must pass before the next one counts, and each has a report in Bing Webmaster Tools.

Work the ladder in order, from rung 1 up. A page that never got crawled can't be cited, so a rewrite won't help it. For rung 4, Bing's guidelines favor pages that are "easy to understand without external context," with "essential information near the top."

A worked example: Plannora

Plannora is a made-up project management tool. In September it published or updated 60 URLs and pinged IndexNow for each. The numbers below are illustrative.

Overall, 9 of 60 pages were cited, or 15%. The IndexNow report lists why the 9 crawled but unindexed pages were left out: 5 with Canonical URL Exists, 3 with Content Quality and 1 with a No-Index Tag. That adds up to 9. A template bug had pointed the canonical tag of 5 new docs pages at the docs home page. The other 6 pages were never crawled.

Now compare two fixes. Fixing the template and removing the stray tag could add 6 indexed pages. At the current 20% citation rate, that's about 1 more cited page (6 × 0.2 = 1.2). Raising the citation rate of the 45 indexed pages from 20% to 30% would add about 4.5 cited pages (45 × 0.1). The technical fixes are cheaper, so Plannora does them first, in a day. But the content work on rung 4 is where most of the gain sits.

Treat rung 4 counts as a direction, not a ledger. AI Performance is sampled, so compare months, not days.

A Weekly Bing Routine for AI Visibility

This routine takes about 30 minutes. Do it on the same day each week, so each check lines up with the last one.

Once a month, add four checks:

• Export your grounding queries and match each one to the page you want cited for it.
• Run a Site Scan and read any new High items in Recommendations.
• Confirm each sitemap's last read date is recent.
• Read the question keywords in Keyword Research for your main topics.

Bing Webmaster Tools can't see ChatGPT's own crawler, so add one outside check. Once a week, count OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User hits in your logs, and look for errors. Local businesses should also keep Bing Places current, since Microsoft points them there to keep their details accurate in AI answers. Our guide to optimizing your business for AI search covers listings.

Where Rankbox Fits in a Bing Workflow

Rankbox doesn't touch your Bing Webmaster Tools account. It doesn't submit URLs to Bing, it doesn't send IndexNow pings for you, and it doesn't track AI citations today. Your CMS or an IndexNow plugin sends the pings, and the AI Performance report shows where you're cited.

Rankbox works on the content rungs of the ladder. Answer-Space Research maps the questions your buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google, and scores them for estimated volume, difficulty and intent. The Citation-Ready Writer researches the live web and writes source-backed articles of 2,000 to 3,500 words, which reach your site through Rankbox's API once a developer wires it in. The Business plan is $49.50 a month with a 7-day trial: see pricing.