Bing Webmaster Tools: What It Is and Why It Matters for AI Search
Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft's free equivalent of Google Search Console. It shows how your site performs in Bing, and its AI Performance report shows how often your pages are cited in Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI answers.
  • Bing's index powers Bing Search, Microsoft Copilot and other services, so it matters more than Bing's search market share suggests.
  • If your site is in Google Search Console, you can import it into Bing Webmaster Tools in minutes, with no separate verification.
  • The AI Performance report shows citations in Copilot and Bing AI summaries. It does not show clicks.
  • Use IndexNow to tell Bing about new and changed URLs instantly.
  • NOARCHIVE and NOCACHE control how Copilot can use your content.

Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) is Microsoft's free service for site owners. Like Google Search Console, it shows the searches your pages appear for, how often they are clicked, which URLs are indexed and what problems Bingbot has found. It also offers something Google has been slower to provide: reporting on how often your content is cited in AI answers.

Why bother with Bing?

  • It feeds Copilot. Microsoft says Copilot and Bing Search share the same crawling, indexing and ranking foundations. If Bing cannot crawl or index a page, Copilot is unlikely to cite it.
  • It reaches other surfaces: Bing results appear in Windows, Edge and a range of partner products.
  • The audience is often B2B. Desktop and workplace users skew towards Bing and Copilot.
  • The tools are good and free, including a site audit and keyword research.

How to set it up

Sign in at bing.com/webmasters with a Microsoft, Google or Facebook account. Then either:

  • Import from Google Search Console (the quickest option). Grant access and Bing brings across your verified sites, sitemaps and user roles, with no separate verification.
  • Add the site manually and verify with an XML file (BingSiteAuth.xml), a meta tag, a CNAME record, or automatic DNS verification with supported providers.

Data usually starts appearing within about 48 hours.

The main reports and tools

  • Search Performance: clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position by query, page, country and device.
  • AI Performance: citations of your content in Copilot, Bing AI summaries and selected partners (see below).
  • URL Inspection: index status, markup checks and a live view of what Bingbot sees.
  • Sitemaps: submit and monitor XML, RSS, Atom or text sitemaps.
  • IndexNow and URL Submission: push new and updated URLs.
  • Site Scan: an on-demand technical SEO crawl of your site.
  • Site Explorer and Backlinks: your site structure and who links to you, including a disavow tool.
  • Keyword Research: query volumes and trends from Bing data.
  • Crawl Control: adjust how fast Bingbot crawls by hour of day.

The AI Performance report

Launched in public preview in February 2026, this report shows how often your pages are referenced as sources in Microsoft's AI experiences. It includes:

  • Total citations over time.
  • Cited pages: which URLs are used, and how often.
  • Grounding queries: the search phrases the AI used to find your content.
  • Later additions such as intents and topics, citation share and comparisons.

Know its limits: it covers Microsoft surfaces only, not ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google. It shows citations, not clicks or traffic. Data is aggregated and sampled, and low-activity pages may not appear.

Grounding queries are particularly useful. They are close to the hidden sub-queries AI systems run in query fan-out, and they reveal which angles of a topic earn citations.

IndexNow

IndexNow lets you notify search engines the moment a URL is added, updated or deleted. Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver and others share submissions; Google does not take part. Many platforms support it natively or via plugins, and Cloudflare's Crawler Hints can send it for you. Submitting a URL does not guarantee indexing, but it speeds up discovery, which matters for freshness in AI answers. Microsoft now recommends IndexNow over manual URL submission.

Controlling Copilot's use of your content

  • NOCACHE (meta robots or X-Robots-Tag): Copilot may use only the URL, title and snippet.
  • NOARCHIVE: content is not used in Copilot answers.

Neither affects ordinary Bing rankings, but both reduce your chance of being cited.

Common mistakes

  • Ignoring Bing because of its search share, and missing Copilot visibility as a result.
  • Blocking or throttling Bingbot at the CDN or firewall.
  • Leaving a crawl-delay in robots.txt, which overrides Crawl Control.
  • Treating AI citations as traffic. Pair the report with referral data in analytics.
  • Forgetting to remove old users after staff or agency changes.

How to use it alongside Google Search Console

Set both up, compare indexing coverage between the two, and use differences as clues. A page indexed by Google but not by Bing often points to crawl access, rendering or quality issues that may also limit AI visibility elsewhere.

Related guides