Why Bing matters more than you think
Bing's index is not just for bing.com. It also powers Microsoft Copilot, Yahoo and much of DuckDuckGo's results. Missing from Bing means disappearing from several engines and assistants at once, and leaving that traffic to your competitors.
IndexNow in short
IndexNow is an open protocol launched in 2021 by Microsoft Bing and Yandex. Instead of waiting for the crawler to come back, your site notifies the engines directly as soon as a page is created, updated or deleted. One notification is shared among the participating engines: Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam and Yep.
IndexNow on WordPress
How it works: a key (a plain text file on your site) proves the notifications come from you, then every post you publish triggers a notification. With Instant Indexing & Check, it is free and automatic: turn IndexNow on in the plugin, it creates the key and reports every new or updated post to Bing, Yandex and Naver. No account needed.
Bing Webmaster Tools
Create a free account on Bing Webmaster Tools: you can import your site straight from Google Search Console in a few clicks. You get the URL Submission tool, URL inspection and Bing's crawl reports. Submit your sitemap too: Bing uses it to discover your pages.
Checking that a page is indexed on Bing
- One page: search
site:example.com/my-article/on bing.com, or use URL inspection in Bing Webmaster Tools. - The whole site: in the plugin, switch the dashboard to the Bing view and run a bulk check (0.2 credit per URL). You immediately see the gap with Google: pages indexed on Google but missing from Bing.
- Submit the missing ones: from the same view, send them directly to Bing (10 credits per URL), on top of the free IndexNow notification.
The limits to know
IndexNow notifies Bing about a page, it does not guarantee indexing: Bing still judges the page. The same rules as for Google apply: useful content, no duplicates, good internal linking. If a page is still missing from Bing weeks after the notification, check its quality and tags before resubmitting it.
Frequently asked questions
Does IndexNow help with Google?
No: Google does not take part in IndexNow. For Google, use Search Console, the Indexing API or the plugin’s Force Index.
Is IndexNow paid?
No. The protocol is free, and the plugin turns it on for free, with no Bing account.
How long does Bing take to index a page?
With IndexNow, Bing often crawls the page within hours. Indexing itself then depends on the page’s quality.