How do you set up Bing Webmaster Tools?
First, which steps can be checked against official text: the sitemap and IndexNow steps come from the Bing Webmaster blog (July 2025) and the Bing's IndexNow get-started page (viewed 2026-11-05). For the "import" and "URL inspection" steps, the Bing help pages returned only their titles when we opened them with a tool, with no body text, so those two are written from the product interface and not checked word for word. Go by the interface you see.
1. Add and verify the site (from the product interface)
After signing in to Bing Webmaster Tools, add your site. If the site is already verified in Google Search Console, you can choose to import it from Search Console when adding; you can also verify with a DNS record or a file.
2. Submit the sitemap (official blog)
You can reference the sitemap in robots.txt or submit it in Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing says it fetches the sitemap right after submission and rechecks it at least once a day; the Sitemaps page shows the submission status, last read date and processing errors. Each file holds up to 50,000 URLs; write lastmod in ISO 8601 with a time, as the real time the content changed; changefreq and priority are ignored. How to write lastmod: see how to write a trustworthy sitemap lastmod.
3. Set up IndexNow (official get-started page)
See the next section: generate a key, host the key file, submit URLs, then confirm in Bing Webmaster Tools that they were received.
4. Check a single page with URL inspection (from the product interface)
Enter a URL to see whether Bing has indexed it and when it was last crawled. If it is not indexed, check robots.txt, noindex and redirects first, then consider submitting it manually.
5. Every few days, check indexed pages and crawl errors
If the indexed page count is far below your real page count, check the sitemap processing errors first. For the Google side, see How to get a new website indexed by Google.
How do you validate the IndexNow key? What do the response codes mean?
Bing's IndexNow get-started page (viewed 2026-11-05) has four steps:
1. Generate a key
The key ties your domain to the URLs you submit. The page has a button to generate one.
2. Host the key file
Save the key as a UTF-8 text file in the site root; the file contains the key itself. Another place on the same host works too, but then you must give its full address as keyLocation when submitting. Validating is simple: open that address in a browser and you should see exactly that key.
3. Submit URLs
Submit with an HTTP POST; the JSON holds host, key, keyLocation and urlList. Submit only URLs that were added, changed or deleted; unchanged ones need not be sent.
4. Confirm in Bing Webmaster Tools
The last step on the page is to check in Bing Webmaster Tools whether the search engine received your URLs.
| Response code | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 200 | Submitted successfully |
| 400 | Invalid format |
| 403 | Key not valid |
| 422 | The URLs do not belong to this host, or the key does not match the protocol requirements |
| 429 | Too many requests |
A 200 only means it was received, not that it will be crawled or indexed. Our own record: after the 2026-11-04 deploy, MochiStamp automatically pushed 198 URLs and got 200; on 11-03 one push had its connection reset, and a manual re-push of 197 URLs returned 200. So check the response code of an automatic push too, not just whether it raised an error. Protocol details: see what IndexNow is.
How big is Bing? MochiStamp's real numbers
Sessions by source for MochiStamp in the last 7 days (to 2026-11-04, from the scoreboard generated 2026-11-05):
| Source | Sessions, last 7 days |
|---|---|
| google / organic | 53 |
| chatgpt.com / ai-assistant | 44 |
| (direct) / (none) | 35 |
| bing / organic | 2 |
Bing search clicks were 1 in the last 7 days and also 1 in the last 28 days; search clicks in Search Console the same week were 48. kagentx had 0 Bing clicks in both the last 7 and last 28 days. In other words, the direct visits Bing sends are tiny.
Then why bother? OpenAI's help center says ChatGPT search uses third-party search providers, and Search Engine Land reported that Bing is one of them. That is a media report: OpenAI has not published the share, nor said its index is Bing's; see does ChatGPT use Bing for the distinctions. chatgpt.com sent 44 sessions the same week, but that does not show any causal link with Bing indexing.
Is it worth doing?
Yes, with realistic expectations. Setup takes a few minutes, and afterwards you can see how many pages Bing has indexed and whether crawling has errors, which is the direct way to know whether you are in Bing's index. It is not a step OpenAI requires and it does not guarantee ChatGPT cites you; what the official docs explicitly require for ChatGPT search is allowing OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt.
FAQ
Do you have to use Bing Webmaster Tools?
No. What OpenAI explicitly requires is allowing OAI-SearchBot. Doing Bing is a low-cost extra that shows how many of your pages Bing has indexed.
Where does the IndexNow key file go?
Per Bing's get-started page: a UTF-8 text file in the site root containing the key; if it is elsewhere, give keyLocation when submitting.
Does a 200 from IndexNow mean the page is indexed?
No. A 200 only means the submission succeeded and was received; it does not guarantee crawling or indexing.
How soon is a sitemap fetched after submission?
Bing's official blog (July 2025) says it fetches right after submission and rechecks at least once a day.
How much traffic can Bing bring?
It depends on the site. MochiStamp had 1 Bing click and 2 bing-sourced sessions in the last 7 days; kagentx had 0 Bing clicks in 28 days. Both are small.
Sources
- Bing · Keeping Content Discoverable with Sitemaps in AI Powered Search （Published July 2025, checked 2026-11-05）
- Bing · IndexNow Get Started （checked 2026-11-05）
- MochiStamp · Sessions by source and Bing clicks, last 7 days （Local data dashboard, read 2026-11-05）
- kagentx evaluations: the data on the case study pages; each example gives its date.