Does Submitting to Bing Webmaster Tools Help Google Indexing?

Two features cause most of the confusion. Bing can import your sites from Google Search Console, but that import copies sites and sitemaps from Google into Bing, never the other way. And IndexNow, the instant-ping protocol Bing promotes, leaves Google out: Google isn't on the list of participating engines, and Google's John Mueller wrote in September 2025 that "Google doesn't use IndexNow."

So set up each console for its own engine. Below: what carries over, what moves Google indexing instead, and when Bing still deserves your time. For the Bing side in depth, see our guide to Bing Webmaster Tools for AI indexing.

What Carries Over From Bing to Google (Almost Nothing)

Every job you do in Bing Webmaster Tools lands in one of three places: Bing alone, Bing plus the other IndexNow engines, or a file on your own site that any crawler can read. Only the last one ever touches Google indexing.

Sources: Bing's help pages (adding sites, URL submission, Block URLs, Site Scan) and Google's (verification, sitemaps, removals, disavow).

The Search Console import runs one way

Bing's help describes the import in one direction. You let Bing access information in your Search Console account, it lists your verified sites and sitemaps, and the sites you pick arrive verified. Later, Bing rechecks ownership and pulls in any new sitemaps it finds.

Nothing flows back, so the import has no effect on Google indexing. Bing sends nothing to Google, and your Google history stays in Google: Bing's Search Performance report collects data only from the day you add a site. You can end the link with Disconnect in your Bing profile.

Why IndexNow pings never reach Google

IndexNow tells search engines the moment a URL changes, and its documentation says participating engines share submitted URLs, so one ping reaches all of them. As of September 2026 the list is Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver, Yep, the Internet Archive and Amazonbot.

Google looked at the protocol and stayed out. In November 2021 a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Journal it would be "testing the potential benefits of this protocol." Mueller's 2025 post settles where that went, though he notes the post reflects his personal views. Google's page on asking Google to recrawl lists two routes, URL Inspection and sitemaps, and doesn't mention IndexNow.

So an IndexNow plugin, Cloudflare's Crawler Hints or a Bing ping does nothing for Google indexing. Keep them running for Bing, since they cost nothing.

What Actually Speeds Up Google Indexing

Google says it doesn't guarantee that it will crawl, index or serve any page. These steps give each page its best shot at Google indexing, in this order:

1. Verify the site in Google Search Console. A Domain property covers every subdomain and both http and https. Google's property help says it can only be verified with a DNS record.
2. Meet the three technical requirements. Google's list is short: Googlebot isn't blocked, the page returns HTTP 200, and it has indexable content.
3. Submit your sitemap in Search Console. Google calls a sitemap "merely a hint," but the Sitemaps report shows when Google last read it and any errors. Google's sitemap guide says it ignores priority and changefreq, and trusts lastmod only when it's "consistently and verifiably" accurate.
4. Link every important page with plain <a href> links. Google finds new pages by following links, and it can't reliably follow script-driven links that lack an href. Internal links from category and hub pages do most of the work.
5. Request indexing for your few most important URLs. Use URL Inspection. There's a quota, and Google's recrawl page warns that asking again for the same URL "won't get it crawled any faster."
6. Read the Page indexing report, then wait. Google says crawling "can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks."

Skip the shortcuts. Google shut down its sitemap ping endpoint after a 2023 deprecation. Its Indexing API only covers job postings and livestream videos. Neither helps an ordinary page.

Read the status before you resubmit

The Page indexing report names the problem you have. Two statuses confuse people most:

• Discovered - currently not indexed. Google knows the URL but hasn't crawled it yet. Google says it usually postponed the crawl because crawling then "was expected to overload the site."
• Crawled - currently not indexed. Google fetched the page and chose not to index it for now. It says there's "no need to resubmit this URL for crawling."

Resubmitting fixes neither status, and a Bing submission can't touch Google indexing at all.

Worked Example: Tallow & Pine's 40 New Pages

Tallow & Pine is a made-up candle shop, with illustrative numbers. On 1 September it published 40 new product pages. The team submitted its sitemap in Bing Webmaster Tools, and its store platform already sent IndexNow pings. Nobody had set up Search Console. Three weeks later, Bing's IndexNow report showed 40 URLs submitted, 37 crawled and 31 indexed. The team assumed Google had them too. It didn't.

They added a Domain property in Search Console, verified it by DNS and submitted the same sitemap. The Sitemaps report read all 40 URLs. Filtered to that sitemap, the Page indexing report showed this:

Bing had 31 of the 40 pages (about 78%). Google had 14 (35%). That 17-page gap is the cost of treating Bing work as Google indexing work.

The fix list follows the statuses. For the 19 discovered pages, the team opened the Crawl stats report, under Settings, to look for slow responses and server errors. Then it linked each product from its category page with a plain <a href> link. The 7 skipped pages were color variants with near-identical text. Each got its own description, or a canonical tag pointing at the main product. Finally, the team requested indexing for its five best sellers only, and set a reminder to recheck the report in two weeks.

One step would have served both engines from day one: a Sitemap: line in robots.txt, which Googlebot and Bingbot both read.

When Bing Webmaster Tools Is Still Worth It

Bing Webmaster Tools won't move Google indexing, but Bing's index reaches places Google's doesn't. Yahoo Help credits its results to "an algorithm run by Microsoft Bing," and DuckDuckGo largely sources its links from Bing. Bing's guidelines say Copilot shares Bing's crawling, indexing and ranking foundation. OpenAI's ChatGPT search help lists Microsoft's privacy statement among its search providers' policies. Our Copilot SEO guide covers the AI side.

Its audits help every engine too. Microsoft says fixing Site Scan issues can help "not only on Bing but on other search engines as well," because a broken link or missing title hurts with any crawler. Our walkthrough of how to use Bing Webmaster Tools for SEO covers those reports step by step.

Rankbox doesn't do the indexing work in either console. It doesn't submit URLs to Google or Bing, send IndexNow pings or track AI citations. It works on what gets indexed: 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. The Business plan is $49.50 a month (pricing).