If you’re an SEO professional, chances are most of your time and attention go toward optimizing for Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). After all, Google still dominates the global search market share.
(But that doesn’t mean it’s the only search engine worth attention.) In this guide, we’ll walk you through Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools and provide a brief overview of Bing SEO best practices.
Understanding Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft’s free SEO platform that helps website owners monitor and improve their site’s performance on Bing. It provides detailed insights into how Bing crawls, indexes, and ranks your web pages.
You can use it to submit sitemaps, track keyword performance, identify technical SEO issues, and understand how your site appears in Bing search results.
Think of it as a kind of “Bing Search Console.”
Why Bing SEO?
Assuming you already understand the fundamentals of SEO, the next question is: why should you care about Bing?
While Google dominates search, Bing remains the second-largest desktop search engine globally, with over 9% market share. That may seem small — but in absolute numbers, it represents millions of searches every day.
If you optimize exclusively for Google, you could miss out on a significant segment of high-intent traffic, especially from desktop users, enterprise environments, and Microsoft ecosystem users.
In short, Bing SEO isn’t a replacement for Google SEO — it’s an opportunity to capture additional visibility with relatively less competition.
How to Use Bing Webmaster Tools?
In this section, I’ll walk you through the Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) dashboard, key features, and how to use them effectively for SEO.
1) Home
The Home dashboard gives you a quick overview of your website’s performance on Bing. It highlights key metrics like clicks, impressions, indexing status, and any critical issues that need attention.
Think of it as your control panel — a snapshot of your site’s SEO performance before diving deeper into specific reports.
2) Search Performance
The Search Performance report shows how your website performs in Bing search results. It provides data on clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and average position for your pages and keywords.
You can filter by query, page, country, and device to identify ranking opportunities, optimize underperforming content, and uncover high-potential keywords.
3) AI Performance (Beta)
The AI Performance report is one of the newest features in Bing Webmaster Tools, currently marked as Beta. It provides insights into how your website performs in Bing’s AI-powered search experiences, including AI-generated answers, summaries, and Microsoft Copilot integrations.
This report helps you understand your visibility across AI-driven results and Copilot-powered responses, enabling you to identify opportunities to optimize content for conversational and AI-enhanced search—an increasingly important area of SEO in 2026.
Further Reading: AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools
4) URL Inspection
The URL Inspection tool allows you to check how a specific page is crawled and indexed by Bing. It shows the page’s index status, last crawl date, detected issues, and whether it’s eligible to appear in search results.
You can also use it to request indexing for new or updated pages, making it a critical tool for troubleshooting and speeding up content discovery.
5) Site Explorer
The Site Explorer provides a structured view of how Bing sees and organizes your website. It displays your pages by directory, URL, and indexing status, helping you understand which pages are discovered and which are excluded.
This tool is useful for identifying crawl gaps, orphan pages, and indexing issues across large websites.
6) Sitemaps
The Sitemaps section allows you to submit and manage your XML sitemaps directly in Bing Webmaster Tools. Submitting a sitemap helps Bing discover, crawl, and index your important pages more efficiently.
You can also monitor sitemap status, see how many URLs are indexed, and identify errors that may prevent proper indexing.
7) IndexNow
IndexNow allows you to instantly notify Bing whenever you publish, update, or delete a page. Instead of waiting for search engines to crawl your site, you proactively push URL changes directly to Bing.
This helps accelerate indexing, reduce crawl delays, and ensure your latest content appears in search results faster — especially useful for news sites, blogs, and frequently updated websites.
8) Backlinks
Backlinks To Any Site
One unique feature of BWT is “Backlinks To Any Site,” which allows you to analyze the backlink profile of any domain — not just your own.
This is a capability that Google Search Console does not provide, making it a valuable competitive research tool for SEO professionals.
9) Keyword Research
The Keyword Research tool helps you discover new keyword ideas based on real Bing search data. You can explore search volume, trends, related keywords, and filter results by country or language.
This feature is useful for content planning, topic expansion, and identifying low-competition opportunities directly within Bing’s ecosystem — without relying on external tools.
How BWT differs from GSC:
BWT provides built-in keyword insights directly within the platform.
In contrast, Google Search Console does not provide a dedicated keyword research tool — users must rely on Google Ads Keyword Planner for that functionality.
10) Recommendations
The Recommendations section provides personalized SEO suggestions based on your website’s performance and Bing’s analysis. It highlights issues such as missing meta tags, indexing problems, crawl errors, and optimization opportunities.
Think of it as an automated SEO checklist — helping you prioritize quick wins and technical improvements that can positively impact your visibility on Bing.
11) Site Scan
The Site Scan feature allows you to run an on-demand audit of your website directly inside Bing Webmaster Tools. It crawls your site and identifies common technical SEO issues such as broken links, missing tags, duplicate content, and other structural problems.
You can use the findings to fix issues and improve your site’s crawlability and user experience. For many SEOs, it can even serve as a lightweight alternative to tools like Screaming Frog for quick technical audits.
12) Crawl Control
The Crawl Control feature allows you to manage when Bingbot crawls your website. You can adjust crawl rates by time of day to prevent heavy crawling during peak traffic hours.
This is useful for sites with limited server resources, as it helps balance search engine crawling with real user traffic to maintain optimal performance.
13) Block URLs
The Block URLs feature allows you to temporarily prevent specific URLs from appearing in Bing search results. This is useful for removing outdated, sensitive, or mistakenly published pages without waiting for natural deindexing.
Keep in mind that this is not a permanent removal solution — for long-term control, you should use proper methods such as noindex tags, password protection, or removing the content entirely.
14) Robots.txt Tester
The Robots.txt Tester allows you to analyze and validate your robots.txt file directly within Bing Webmaster Tools. It helps you check whether specific URLs are allowed or blocked from being crawled by Bingbot.
This tool is useful for preventing accidental crawl restrictions and ensuring that important pages remain accessible to search engines while sensitive areas stay properly blocked.
15) Verify Bingbot
The Verify Bingbot tool helps you confirm whether a crawler accessing your website is genuinely Bingbot or a fake bot impersonating it. By checking the IP address and validation results, you can protect your site from malicious crawlers.
This feature is especially useful for security and log analysis, ensuring that only legitimate Bing crawlers are treated as trusted search engine traffic.
16) Copyright Removal Notices
The Copyright Removal Notices section allows you to submit requests to remove content from Bing search results due to copyright infringement. This is typically used when your original content has been copied or distributed without permission.
By filing a proper notice, you could protect your intellectual property and request that infringing URLs be removed from Bing’s index in accordance with copyright policies.
17) User Management
The User Management feature allows you to control who has access to your Bing Webmaster Tools account. You can add multiple users and assign different permission levels, such as read-only or full access.
This is especially useful for agencies, SEO teams, or organizations where multiple stakeholders need access while maintaining proper account security and control.
18) Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft Clarity integrates directly with Bing Webmaster Tools, allowing you to connect behavioral analytics with search performance data. It provides heatmaps, session recordings, and user interaction insights to help you understand how visitors engage with your pages.
By combining Clarity data with Bing search insights, you can identify UX issues, improve engagement, and optimize pages not just for rankings — but for conversions as well.
BWT vs GSC
Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console: What Makes Them Different?
Both platforms help you monitor how your website performs in search results, track indexing issues, and fix technical SEO problems. At a fundamental level, they serve the same purpose: helping search engines crawl and understand your site better.
The main difference lies in the ecosystem and features. Google Search Console is focused solely on Google Search, while Bing Webmaster Tools supports the broader Microsoft ecosystem, including Bing-powered experiences and integrations like Microsoft Copilot and Clarity.
Bing also includes several built-in tools that Google does not offer directly inside Search Console — such as a dedicated Keyword Research tool, “Backlinks to Any Site” competitor analysis, Site Scan (technical crawler), Crawl Control, and IndexNow integration.
In short, Google Search Console is essential because of Google’s market dominance, but Bing Webmaster Tools provides additional competitive intelligence and technical features that make it a valuable complementary SEO platform — not just a secondary one.
Bing SEO
Understanding Microsoft Bing Search Engine
Microsoft Bing is a web search engine developed by Microsoft that powers not only Bing.com but also search experiences across the Microsoft ecosystem, including Windows, Edge, and AI-powered features like Copilot.
While it holds a smaller global market share than Google, Bing has a strong presence in desktop search, enterprise environments, and regions where Microsoft products are widely used.
From an SEO perspective, Bing uses its own crawling, indexing, and ranking algorithms. While many core SEO principles remain the same — such as high-quality content, technical optimization, and backlinks — Bing places slightly different emphasis on factors like domain authority, exact-match keywords, and social signals.
Bing Search Ranking Factors
Bing’s ranking system follows many of the same core SEO principles as Google, but there are a few notable differences.
For example, Bing places relatively stronger emphasis on exact keyword matches in key on-page elements such as the title tag, meta description, domain name, and H1/H2 headings.
Social signals also play a role — content that earns shares and engagement on platforms like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) may gain additional ranking strength.
Further Reading: Google Ranking Factors
Like Google, Bing does not publicly disclose the full details of its algorithm. Keeping ranking formulas confidential helps prevent manipulation and spam.
However, Bing is more transparent about the high-level factors it considers when determining search rankings:
Relevance
Content must match the user’s search intent. Bing evaluates keyword alignment within the page content, headings, and anchor text, as well as related or semantically similar terms.
Quality and Credibility
Bing favors original, trustworthy, and authoritative content. It assesses backlinks, source citations, and whether the site distinguishes fact from opinion.
User Engagement
Behavioral signals matter. Bing looks at metrics such as click-through rates and whether users quickly return to the search results (pogo-sticking).
Freshness
Up-to-date content is prioritized when recency is important to the query.
Location and Language
Bing considers the searcher’s geographic location, the page’s language, and regional relevance.
Faster-loading pages are preferred, as slow websites often provide poor user experiences.
Additionally, Bing strictly prohibits deceptive SEO practices. Techniques such as cloaking, keyword stuffing, and link spamming can result in penalties or removal from search results.
As with any major search engine, sustainable SEO success on Bing depends on relevance, authority, and delivering real value to users.
Conclusion
In this guide, we explored what Bing Webmaster Tools is, walked through its dashboard features, compared it with Google Search Console, and covered the fundamentals of Bing SEO.
While many SEOs focus heavily on Google, Bing Webmaster Tools offers powerful built-in features — such as keyword research, competitor backlink analysis, Site Scan, and IndexNow — that GSC simply doesn’t provide.
That’s why I genuinely consider Bing Webmaster Tools one of the most underrated SEO tools; it’s completely free, yet delivers capabilities that often require paid platforms like Semrush, Ahrefs, or Ubersuggest.
Bing Mobile Friendliness Test tool
Bing Places for Business (Google Business Profile Equivalent)
What is Microsoft Clarity?
Microsoft Clarity is a free web analytics tool that helps you understand how users interact with your website. It provides heatmaps, session recordings, and engagement insights to improve user experience and conversions.
Microsoft Clarity vs Google Analytics 4
Microsoft Clarity focuses on user behavior and engagement by showing heatmaps and session recordings so you can see how real visitors interact with your pages.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) takes a broader approach to traffic analysis and conversion tracking, measuring user journeys, events, and audience behavior across your entire site or app.
In short, Clarity shows you how users behave visually, while GA4 shows you what users are doing and why from a performance and conversion perspective.
What is Bing Places for Business?
Bing Places for Business is Microsoft’s local listing platform that allows businesses to manage how they appear in Bing search and maps results. You can add business details such as address, phone number, hours, and photos to improve local search visibility.
Bing Places for Business vs Google Business Profile
Bing Places for Business lets you create and manage your business listing specifically for Bing search results and Bing Maps. It helps improve local visibility on Bing but has a smaller audience compared to Google.
Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the dominant local listing platform used across Google Search and Google Maps, giving businesses broader reach and more features like reviews, bookings, and messaging.
In short, both help with local SEO, but Google Business Profile typically reaches a larger audience, while Bing Places strengthens visibility within the Microsoft ecosystem.