Bing, Copilot and IndexNow: the search engine most SEO plans forget
Why Bing matters beyond its own results: how Copilot draws on Bing’s index, how to set up Bing Webmaster Tools and IndexNow, and how to measure the results.
Most SEO plans are written for Google and leave Bing to look after itself. That was a reasonable shortcut when Bing was simply a smaller search engine, but Microsoft Copilot grounds its answers in Bing’s index, so a page Bing hasn’t indexed can’t be cited there. The good news is that Bing is also the easiest engine to get right: a morning in Bing Webmaster Tools, IndexNow switched on, and content that’s easy to quote.
Why Bing matters beyond bing.com
Bing’s index does more work than its own results page suggests. When Copilot needs current information, it searches Bing and cites the pages it draws on. Copilot sits inside Windows, Edge and Microsoft 365, so for many people it’s the assistant closest to hand at work. A number of other search products and AI tools draw on Bing’s results as well.
The practical consequence is simple. If Bingbot can’t fetch a page, or Bing decides not to index it, that page is missing from all of those places at once. And Bing isn’t a copy of Google: it runs its own crawler, its own index and its own ranking systems. In audits we regularly find sites that are well indexed in Google but patchy in Bing, often because a firewall or bot-protection rule blocks Bingbot, or because the sitemaps were only ever submitted to Search Console.
If you’re reviewing your SEO priorities for 2025, Bing deserves a line of its own.
Setting up Bing Webmaster Tools
- Import from Search Console. The quickest route: sign in with your Google account, choose your properties, and Bing verifies them and brings their sitemaps across. Otherwise, verify with an XML file, a meta tag or a DNS record.
- Sitemaps. Check that they arrived and are processed without errors. Bing still relies on sitemaps for coverage and treats
lastmodas a freshness signal, so the date should change only when the content does. - URL Inspection. Shows whether a URL is indexed, any crawling or indexing problems, and issues with its markup.
- Site Scan. An on-demand crawl that reports errors, warnings and notices, from broken links to missing titles.
- Backlinks. Bing’s own view of who links to you, which you can compare with similar sites.
Bing Webmaster Tools setup
- Import the site from Search Console, or verify it directly
- Confirm sitemaps arrived and are processed without errors
- Check robots.txt, firewall and CDN rules let Bingbot in
- Set up IndexNow, or switch on your platform’s integration
- Inspect your most important URLs with URL Inspection
- Run a Site Scan and fix the errors first
- Compare your backlinks with similar sites
- Add Search Performance to your monthly report
How IndexNow works
Crawlers normally discover changes by coming back to pages and checking. IndexNow turns that around: you tell search engines when a URL has been added, updated or deleted.
The setup has two parts. First, generate a key and host it as a text file at the root of your site, such as https://example.com/your-key.txt, so engines can confirm the notifications really come from you. Second, send a ping whenever something changes: a single URL in a simple GET request, or a JSON list of up to 10,000 URLs in one POST. A ping to one participating engine is shared with the others, which include Bing, Yandex, Seznam and Naver.
Three things to keep in mind:
- Google doesn’t use IndexNow. Keep your sitemaps, internal links and Search Console routine for Google.
- A ping is a hint, not a guarantee. A 200 response means the engine received the URL. Bing still decides whether and when to crawl it, and whether it deserves a place in the index.
- You probably don’t need to build it. Many CMS plugins and some CDNs can send IndexNow pings automatically. Check what your platform offers, and what it actually sends once it’s on.
How a change reaches Bing and Copilot
- PublishA page is added, updated or deleted
- IndexNow pingThe URL is sent once and shared with other IndexNow engines
- Bing fetchesBingbot crawls the URL it was told about
- IndexBing assesses the page and decides whether to keep it
- AnswersBing results, Copilot and services built on Bing’s index
What to submit, and what to leave out
Automatic pinging gets noisy quickly. Submit a URL when something a searcher would notice has changed, and leave alone the edits that don’t change what the page says. Avoid sending the same URL again and again in a day: engines can throttle sites that resubmit too often.
What to submit through IndexNow
| Event | What to submit | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| New page published | The new URL | Submit |
| Content, price or availability changed | The updated URL | Submit |
| Page deleted (404 or 410) | The removed URL, so it can be dropped | Submit |
| URL changed with a 301 | Both the old and the new URL | Submit both |
| Migration or site-wide template change | Bulk POSTs in batches, plus updated sitemaps | Batch |
| Typo fix, new timestamp, footer change | Nothing | Skip |
| Same URL many times a day | Wait until the content has settled | Avoid |
When a URL moves, submit both addresses: the old one, so the engine sees the redirect, and the new one, so it gets crawled. Wiring IndexNow into a publishing workflow is usually a small job, and it’s a standard part of our technical SEO work. Agree the rules above before you switch it on.
Making your content easy for Copilot to use
What’s documented is that Copilot grounds its answers in Bing’s index. Microsoft hasn’t published how Copilot chooses which pages to cite, so treat what follows as good practice rather than a formula. It’s the same work we do in AI search optimisation, and it helps on Google too.
- Write quotable answers. Put the direct answer at the top of the section that asks the question, in a sentence that still makes sense when lifted out on its own. Specific facts, prices, steps and definitions are easier to cite than general claims.
- Add structured data. Bing reads schema.org markup, and
Organization,Product,LocalBusinessandArticlehelp it understand what a page is about and who is behind it. Our guide to structured data in 2025 covers what still earns rich results. - Keep entity details consistent. Use the same business name, address, phone number and description on your site, in Bing Places if you serve customers locally, and across the profiles that describe you. Contradictions make it harder for any system to be confident about who you are.
- Check your robots directives. Bing uses
noarchiveandnocacheto limit how a page can appear in its chat answers, so make sure nobody added them by accident.
Measuring Bing and Copilot
Start in Bing Webmaster Tools. The Search Performance report shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position by page and query. Compare it with Search Console: pages that do well in Google but barely register in Bing often point to a crawling or indexing gap worth checking.
In GA4, Bing visits appear under organic search with the source bing. Copilot visits usually arrive as referrals, for example from copilot.microsoft.com, though some come through Bing itself and some arrive with no referrer at all. Group the AI referrers in one exploration or custom channel so they don’t disappear into a long referral list, and look at key events, not just sessions.
Expect smaller numbers than Google. Judge Bing by whether its visitors enquire and buy.
Want to know whether Bing and Copilot can see your best pages? Request a free SEO audit and a senior strategist will review your crawling, indexing and AI search visibility within 48 hours.