How to add Bing Webmaster Tools to a WordPress site

Step by step

1. Sign in and choose a route

Go to Bing Webmaster Tools and sign in with a Microsoft account. On the first screen you are offered two options: import your sites from Google Search Console, or add a site manually. Use the import if the same person controls both accounts. Use the manual route if the Google account belongs to someone else, or if you want Bing's verification to stand on its own.

2. Route A: import from Search Console

Choose the import option, sign in with the Google account that owns the Search Console property, and allow access. Select the sites to bring over and confirm. Bing adds them as verified and copies their submitted sitemaps. Bing rechecks ownership through that Google connection, so if you later remove its access you will need another method, such as the tag in the next step.

3. Route B: verify with the meta tag

1. In Bing, add your site's URL manually and pick the HTML meta tag option. Bing shows a line like <meta name="msvalidate.01" content="0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF" />.
2. In wp-admin, open Hydrogen SEO → Webmaster Tools.
3. Paste into the Bing Webmaster Tools field. You can paste the whole tag or only the value of content. The code saves immediately, and the exact tag that will be printed is shown under the field.
4. Back in Bing, click Verify.

If the field shows "That isn't a verification code", what you pasted was not a single code or a full meta tag. Copy it again from Bing.

4. Confirm the tag is on the homepage

curl -s https://example.com/ | grep -i "msvalidate.01"

The tag must be in the HTML the server sends for the homepage, as a logged-out visitor sees it. If verification fails although the code is saved, a page cache or CDN is serving an older copy: purge it and try again. A maintenance or coming-soon mode that hides the homepage also hides the tag.

5. Submit your sitemap

In Bing Webmaster Tools, open Sitemaps and click Submit sitemap. Enter the address of your sitemap index: https://example.com/sitemap.xml with Hydrogen SEO, or https://example.com/wp-sitemap.xml with the core sitemap. Imported sites usually have this already. Bing also discovers the sitemap through the Sitemap: line in robots.txt, but submitting it gives you a status report.

6. Switch on IndexNow

Bing accepts IndexNow, a protocol for telling search engines about changed URLs right away. Open Hydrogen SEO → Instant Indexing and turn on the switch in the IndexNow card. The plugin creates a key, serves the key file, and notifies participating engines shortly after you publish, update or remove content. Google does not use IndexNow, so this complements your sitemap. It does not replace it.

7. Leave the code in place

Keep the msvalidate.01 code saved for as long as you use Bing Webmaster Tools. Removing it, deactivating the plugin, or switching to a theme that does not call wp_head() takes the tag off your pages, and ownership checks can then fail. If you ever change SEO plugins, copy the code somewhere first.

Without the plugin

Print the tag from a child theme or small plugin:

add_action( 'wp_head', function () {
    echo '<meta name="msvalidate.01" content="0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF" />' . "\n";
}, 2 );

Bing also offers two methods that involve no WordPress code: uploading a BingSiteAuth.xml file to the site root, and adding a CNAME record at your DNS host. DNS verification survives theme and plugin changes, which makes it a good choice for long-lived sites.

What to look at first in Bing

Once data arrives, check three things. Site Explorer shows which URLs Bing knows and any it could not crawl. Search Performance lists the queries and pages with impressions and clicks. URL Inspection tells you whether a given page is indexed and lets you request a recrawl. Problems Bing reports, such as blocked resources or missing descriptions, usually apply to Google too, so the second opinion is useful.