Bing SEO matters again because Bing’s index is what Microsoft Copilot searches when it answers, and it’s one of the sources ChatGPT’s web browsing draws on. If your key pages aren’t in Bing, Copilot can’t retrieve or cite them and ChatGPT loses one of its routes to them, however well you rank on Google. Closing the gap is mostly setup: a few hours in Bing Webmaster Tools, then a short check every quarter.
Why Bing matters for AI visibility
Most marketing teams open Search Console every week and have never logged into Bing Webmaster Tools. That made sense when the only prize was Bing’s own search clicks. Now Bing is a retrieval layer for AI assistants, and assistants build shortlists from the pages they can fetch.
Google and Bing crawl and index independently. A page that ranks on Google may not exist in Bing at all, especially on newer or lower-authority sites, where Bing tends to be more selective. Many sites have never submitted a sitemap to Bing either.
A hypothetical example: a B2B SaaS company ranks on Google for its comparison and use-case pages, but Bing has indexed only the homepage and a handful of blog posts. When a buyer asks Copilot for the best tools in the category, the answer is built from pages Bing can retrieve, which means competitors’ comparison pages and third-party roundups. The company isn’t losing on quality. It isn’t in the room.
How Bing’s index feeds Copilot and other AI assistants
When Copilot answers a question that needs current information, it runs Bing searches, pulls the top results and writes an answer from them with citations. Bing’s own results page shows AI-generated answers from the same index. So being indexed and ranking in Bing is the entry ticket for both.
Other assistants use Bing to different degrees:
| Assistant or engine | Where it gets web content | Effect of Bing work |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Copilot | Bing search results | Direct |
| Bing AI answers | Bing index | Direct |
| ChatGPT browsing | Bing search results, when it chooses to browse | Partial |
| Yahoo and DuckDuckGo | Largely Bing results | Direct for classic results |
| Perplexity | Its own crawler (PerplexityBot) and index | Little; fix its crawl access separately |
| Google AI Overviews | Google’s index | None; that’s Search Console work |
Two technical points trip teams up. First, Bingbot is the one crawler behind both classic Bing search and Copilot, so there’s no separate AI crawler to allow or block. Block Bingbot and you disappear from both. Second, Bing documents that the noarchive and nocache robots directives restrict how much of a page’s content can be used in its AI answers. Some plugins and CDN settings add these tags site-wide. If yours do, remove them from pages you want cited.
For how Bing fits into the wider picture of search versus AI answers, see GEO vs SEO.
Setting up Bing Webmaster Tools and importing from Search Console
If your site is already verified in Google Search Console, setup takes minutes.
- Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools with a Microsoft or Google account.
- Import from Search Console. Choose the import option, authorize read access and select your properties. Bing verifies them automatically and brings over their sitemaps.
- Or verify manually. If you don’t use Search Console, verify with an XML file uploaded to your root, a
msvalidate.01meta tag or a DNS CNAME record. DNS survives site rebuilds best. - Check the Sitemaps report. Confirm each sitemap shows as processed with a sensible URL count, rather than assuming the import brought everything across. Add any sitemap you create later directly in Bing.
- Test robots.txt. Use the robots.txt tester to confirm Bingbot can reach your priority pages, and look for a leftover
crawl-delayline. Google ignores that directive; Bing honors it, so a high value can throttle crawling on a large site. - Add users properly. Give your developer or agency their own access through user management with the right role instead of sharing one login.
Local and multi-location businesses should also claim Bing Places for Business, which can import listings from Google Business Profile. Bing’s local results draw on those listings, so they shape what Copilot can say when a buyer asks a local question.
IndexNow for faster indexing
IndexNow is an open protocol for telling search engines that a URL was added, updated or deleted, instead of waiting for them to recrawl. Bing supports it, as do Yandex, Seznam, Naver and others, and participating engines share submitted URLs with each other. Google doesn’t use it, so it complements your sitemaps rather than replacing them.
Setup has three parts:
- Generate a key and host it as a text file at your site root, so engines can confirm the pings come from you.
- Send pings when content changes: a request to an IndexNow endpoint with the changed URL, or a POST with a batch of up to 10,000 URLs.
- Check the IndexNow report in Bing Webmaster Tools to confirm submissions are received and see any errors.
You rarely need to build this by hand. Several CMSs, website builders and CDNs support IndexNow natively or through plugins. Elsewhere, a small automation works: a webhook that fires on publish, update or delete and calls the endpoint.
Rules that keep IndexNow useful:
- Ping only real changes. Resubmitting unchanged URLs on a schedule adds nothing.
- Ping deletions and redirects too, so stale URLs drop out faster.
- Don’t submit URLs that are noindexed, canonicalized elsewhere or blocked in robots.txt.
Where Bing ranking signals differ from Google
Bing’s webmaster guidelines name relevance, quality and credibility, user engagement, freshness, location and page load time. That list looks a lot like Google’s. The differences show up in practice:
| Area | What tends to differ on Bing | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Indexing | More selective with thin, duplicate or low-authority pages | Consolidate weak pages; strengthen internal links to priority URLs |
| On-page clarity | Plain, descriptive titles and headings carry noticeable weight | Say what the page is in the title and H1 using buyers’ words |
| JavaScript | Bingbot renders JavaScript, but server-rendered HTML is safer | Keep critical copy, links and structured data in the initial HTML |
| Crawl directives | Honors crawl-delay; Google ignores it | Remove or lower leftover delays |
| Freshness | Change signals get picked up quickly through IndexNow | Ping updates; keep visible updated dates honest |
| Links | Quality over volume, and you can see the data | Use Bing’s Backlinks tool to compare your profile with competitors’ |
The on-page point is a pattern I see in audits, not a published ranking factor: pages with vague, clever titles often hold up on Google and struggle on Bing. The fix costs nothing and helps AI answers anyway, since assistants match pages to long, literal prompts.
Checking whether your key pages are indexed in Bing
Build a priority list of 20 to 50 pages that matter most when an assistant describes or recommends you: homepage, product or service pages, pricing, comparison and alternatives pages, top use-case pages and your About page.
Then check each one:
- URL Inspection. Paste the URL into Bing Webmaster Tools. It shows whether the page is indexed and flags crawl, SEO or markup issues.
- Site Explorer. Browse your site by folder to see how many URLs Bing knows about and which sections have crawl errors or redirects.
- Search Performance. A priority page with Bing impressions is indexed. One with zero impressions deserves a closer look.
- A
site:search on Bing. Useful as a quick spot check, not as a count. - Server logs. Confirm Bingbot actually requests your priority URLs. User agents can be faked, so confirm with Bing’s Verify Bingbot tool.
When a priority page isn’t indexed, the cause is usually one of four things:
- Not crawled: no internal links, missing from the sitemap, blocked in robots.txt or throttled by crawl-delay. Fix access, then submit through IndexNow.
- Crawled but not indexed: thin, near-duplicate or weakly linked. Merge it with a stronger page, expand it, or link to it from pages Bing already values.
- Wrong URL indexed: parameter or duplicate versions winning over the canonical. Tighten canonicals and internal links so they all point to one version.
- Indexed but limited in AI answers:
noarchiveornocacheon the page.
Once priority pages are in, test the prompts buyers actually ask in Copilot and ChatGPT and record whether you’re named and cited. The setup for doing that on a schedule is in how to track your brand in ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews.
A quarterly Bing checklist
Once set up, Bing work is maintenance. Run this every quarter and after any migration or redesign:
- Every property you care about is verified in Bing Webmaster Tools, and access is current for everyone who needs it
- All sitemaps show as processed, with URL counts that match reality
- IndexNow pings are firing on publish, update and delete, with no errors in the report
- robots.txt allows Bingbot to reach priority pages, with no unexpected
crawl-delay - No
noarchiveornocachetags on pages you want cited - Every URL on the priority list is indexed, and the canonical version is the one showing
- Site Scan or your crawler shows no new sitewide issues such as broken links, redirect chains or missing titles
- Bing Places listings match your current name, address, hours and categories, if you’re a local business
- Copilot and ChatGPT prompt checks re-run and compared with last quarter
In a GEO program, this sits in the technical layer, next to crawler access and structured data. It’s one of the first things I check in GEO and AI search visibility work, because no content or mention strategy helps if the assistant can’t retrieve the page.
Get it built
If you rank well on Google but Copilot and ChatGPT keep naming competitors, the Bing gap is a quick thing to rule out, and I can close it along with whatever else is keeping you out of AI answers. Start with a Growth Audit, $1,500 fixed and credited if we continue. See pricing or get in touch.