What is Bing Webmaster Tools?

Setting it up

The quickest route is importing your site from Google Search Console, which skips separate verification. Bing also accepts an XML file upload, a meta tag in your page's head, or a DNS record.

Hydrogen SEO doesn't carry over webmaster verification codes when you import from another SEO plugin, so if you prefer the meta tag, print it with the plugin's hydrogen_seo_print_meta action:

add_action( 'hydrogen_seo_print_meta', function () {
    echo '<meta name="msvalidate.01" content="YOUR-CODE" />' . "\n";
}, 20 );

Then submit your sitemap index; the submit your sitemap guide covers both Google and Bing.

Reports that differ from Search Console

• AI Performance (public preview since February 2026): citations of your pages in Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and some partner integrations, with the grounding queries that led to them and page-level activity. It counts citations, not clicks.
• URL Inspection: how Bing sees one URL, similar to Google's tool.
• Site Scan: an on-demand crawl that reports common technical SEO issues.
• Backlinks and Keyword Research: link data and query research that Search Console doesn't offer.
• IndexNow: Bing supports IndexNow, so changed URLs can be pushed for recrawling instead of waiting.

Bing's crawler

Bing crawls with Bingbot, which honors its own robots.txt token. If you block it, you also cut off the index that grounds Copilot's answers. The Bingbot profile lists its user agent and how to verify it, and answer engine optimization covers why being citable in AI answers matters.