How to Submit a Sitemap to Bing
Submitting your sitemap to Bing helps ensure that your site is indexed efficiently on Microsoft’s search engine. This guide walks you through the process step by step.
Give Bing a Direct Path to Your Sitemap
Bing Webmaster Tools helps you submit, monitor, validate, and troubleshoot sitemap coverage for better discovery.
- Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Submit the full sitemap or sitemap index URL.
- Monitor submitted, discovered, and indexed URLs.
- Use validation and automation to keep the file fresh.
Bing may not be the only search engine you optimize for, but it still gives your website another important discovery channel.
While Google dominates global search traffic, Bing powers a significant share of queries, including searches from Microsoft Edge, Windows, and voice assistants like Cortana. As emphasized in Benefits of Using a Sitemap, submitting your sitemap directly ensures that crawlers recognize new and updated content quickly, giving you visibility across multiple platforms.
Submitting to Bing also gives site owners access to reporting tools that can help identify crawl issues, indexing problems, URL discovery gaps, and sitemap errors that may not appear in other platforms.
Start by logging into Bing Webmaster Tools and confirming that the website is added and verified.
Start by logging into Bing Webmaster Tools with your Microsoft account. If your website is not yet added, you’ll need to add and verify it first. Verification options are similar to those used by Google, including DNS record updates or meta tag placement, as discussed in How to Submit a Sitemap to Google.
Once the property is verified, Bing can associate your sitemap submission with the correct site and provide reports on sitemap status, crawl activity, and indexing visibility.
Adding your site to both Google and Bing ensures comprehensive coverage. Verification may also unlock additional features, including search performance insights.
Keep login and verification records documented so future site administrators can maintain access.
Before submitting, confirm that your sitemap URL is live, accessible, valid, and focused on indexable pages.
Step 2: Navigate to the Sitemaps Tool
Once your site is verified, open the “Sitemaps” tool in the dashboard. Here you can view the status of existing submissions and add new ones.
As highlighted in Sitemap Validation Tools, confirm your sitemap file is valid before submitting it to prevent unnecessary errors.
Step 3: Enter Your Sitemap URL
Type the full URL of your sitemap into the field provided. Typically, this is https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml.
For sites using multiple files, submit the index file as explained in Sitemap Index Files Explained, which organizes all component sitemaps.
After submission, Bing processes your sitemap and displays coverage results. You can see how many URLs were submitted, discovered, and indexed.
For troubleshooting, refer to Troubleshooting Sitemap Errors to resolve issues quickly and maintain indexing accuracy.
Sitemap submission is not finished once the URL is entered. Monitoring helps confirm that Bing can actually read and use the file.
Review warnings, crawl errors, rejected URLs, blocked pages, redirects, malformed entries, and unexpected indexing gaps. If Bing reports errors, fix the sitemap or page issue first, then resubmit or wait for the next crawl cycle.
Monitoring is especially important after platform migrations, URL changes, product updates, content cleanup, or changes to robots rules.
Bing Webmaster Tools can do more than accept sitemap submissions. Use it as part of a broader technical SEO workflow.
Advanced Features
Bing Webmaster Tools provides more than just submission. It includes tools to analyze backlinks, detect malware, and measure site performance. As covered in Case Study: Improving SEO with Sitemaps, pairing sitemap submission with these insights helps strengthen long-term strategies.
Updating Your Sitemap
Submitting once isn’t enough. Each time your sitemap changes, Bing needs to know. Automating this process with strategies from Automating Sitemap Updates ensures that your sitemap remains fresh without constant manual effort.
Use this process to submit, monitor, and maintain sitemap visibility in Bing.
Prepare the Sitemap
Generate a clean XML sitemap or sitemap index that includes only valid, indexable, canonical URLs.
Validate Before Submission
Check the file for broken URLs, malformed XML, redirects, blocked pages, and non-canonical entries.
Verify the Site
Add and verify the website in Bing Webmaster Tools using an approved verification method.
Submit the Sitemap URL
Open the Sitemaps tool, enter the full sitemap URL, and submit it for Bing to process.
Monitor and Refresh
Review sitemap status, fix reported errors, and keep the sitemap updated as the website changes.
Submitting your sitemap to Bing is straightforward but powerful. It speeds up indexing, reduces errors, and provides insight into site performance. By pairing this with validation tips from Sitemap Validation Tools and extending coverage with Image Sitemaps for SEO or Video Sitemaps Overview, you ensure comprehensive visibility across formats and platforms. In today’s multi-engine landscape, submitting to Bing is a crucial step for maximizing reach.
Use these related guides to learn more about sitemap benefits, Google submission, validation, sitemap indexes, troubleshooting, automation, and multimedia sitemap formats.
A clean sitemap submission helps Bing discover new content, review coverage, flag issues, and support search visibility beyond Google.