How to get your business on Bing, Bing Maps and Copilot

It is easy to set up a Google Business Profile and never look at how Bing sees your business. That was an easy gap to leave when Bing was simply the other search engine. It is harder to ignore now that Microsoft says Copilot sends search queries to Bing to ground its answers, and Bing's own webmaster guidelines describe Bing search and Copilot as resting on the same crawling, indexing and ranking foundation.

This guide covers the three things to do: claim your Bing Places listing, add your website to Bing Webmaster Tools, and give Bing what its guidelines ask for. It takes an afternoon. There is a checklist at the end.

What Bing uses to rank results

Microsoft publishes the main factors on its page How Bing delivers search results:

• Relevance: how closely a page matches what the person is looking for, including synonyms and the words used in links to it.
• Quality and credibility: including the clarity of the site's purpose, its usability and presentation, and its reputation, such as which other sites link to it.
• User engagement: how people interact with results, such as whether they click through and stay.
• Freshness: Bing generally prefers up-to-date content, where the subject calls for it.
• Location and language: the searcher's location, where the page is hosted, its language, and where other visitors to the page are.
• Page load time: Bing treats slow pages as a poorer experience.

For businesses, the same page notes that Bing may show business information such as opening hours and location, and that owners can claim and update their listing through Bing Places for Business.

Step one: claim your Bing Places listing

Bing Places for Business is, in Microsoft's words, a free online platform where businesses can create and manage listings that appear in Bing search results and Bing Maps. Microsoft announced a rebuilt version in October 2025, moving it from bingplaces.com to bing.com/forbusiness.

• Search Bing for your business first. If a listing already exists, claim it rather than creating a second one.
• Import from Google if you have a Google Business Profile. Microsoft says the import preserves key details such as business name, hours and contact details. It is the quickest route.
• Otherwise, add your business manually, using exactly the same name, address and phone number as everywhere else.
• Complete the verification steps Bing offers you. The options can vary by business and country.
• Check everything after importing. Categories, hours, the map pin, your website link and your description.
• Follow the Recommendation Tool. Microsoft says it suggests missing details that help, such as photos, your website link, opening hours and social links.
• Add photos of your premises and your work.

Use the same details you use on Google, word for word. Bing's guidelines ask for people and organisations to be named clearly and consistently, and search engines and assistants both cross-check what different sites say about you. Our local SEO checklist covers keeping those details consistent everywhere.

Step two: add your website to Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools is Bing's equivalent of Google Search Console, and it now includes a report on AI citations.

• Add your site. Microsoft's help on adding a site offers two routes: import from Google Search Console, which verifies your sites automatically, or add the site manually and verify it with one of four methods.
• Submit your sitemap, if the import did not bring it across.
• Wait about 48 hours, which Microsoft says is how long data usually takes to appear.
• Look at Search Performance for the searches you appear for on Bing.
• Look at AI Performance for when Copilot cites your pages. We explain the report in Bing's AI Performance report.
• Run Site Scan and fix what it flags.
• Use Keyword Research to see what people search for on Bing in your area of business.

Step three: give Bing what its guidelines ask for

Bing's webmaster guidelines are unusually specific, and most of what they ask for costs nothing but attention.

• Tell Bing when pages change, using IndexNow. Bing asks sites to notify it when URLs are added, updated or removed, and prefers notifications as changes happen rather than in large batches. Some website platforms and plugins support IndexNow; check whether yours does.
• Keep your sitemap accurate, listing only real pages, with the date each was last changed.
• Do not block Bingbot in your robots.txt file.
• Make sure content does not depend on scripts to appear. Bing warns that content it cannot reliably render may not be indexed. If pages are missing, work through why.
• Avoid the "nocache" and "noarchive" settings on pages you want cited. Bing says noarchive prevents content being used in Copilot responses, and nocache limits Copilot to the URL, title and snippet.
• Put the key information near the top of each page, and keep each page to one topic.
• State facts plainly on the page, rather than relying on things implied or shown only in images.
• Give images alt text and, where useful, captions.
• Use permanent (301) redirects when a page moves.
• Write clear titles and descriptions for every page.

Bing's guidelines also list what to avoid: cloaking, buying links, duplicate pages, scraped content, keyword stuffing, mass-produced automated content, misleading structured data, and content designed to manipulate AI answers.

What about Copilot specifically?

There is no Copilot sign-up. Everything above is how you become eligible to be cited: Bing has to be able to find your site, index it, understand it and trust it. Microsoft's own description of the relationship is that Bing and Copilot search experiences rely on the same foundation as traditional search.

Two practical things help:

• Answer questions directly. Copilot cites pages that answer the question it is working on. A clear, specific answer near the top of the page is easier to use than a paragraph of preamble.
• Check what Copilot actually cites. The AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools shows which of your pages are cited and for which phrases, which is a far better guide than guessing.

The Bing checklist, in one place

• Bing Places listing claimed, verified and complete.
• Details identical to Google Business Profile and your website.
• Site added to Bing Webmaster Tools, with a sitemap.
• IndexNow set up, or a plan to add it.
• Nothing blocking Bingbot, and no nocache or noarchive on pages you want cited.
• Key pages answer their main question near the top.
• AI Performance report checked monthly.

If you would rather hand search over to someone, our SEO audit and first fixes is a fixed £2,500: a technical audit with the fixes that matter most made, the searches worth going after, improvements to your key pages, and your Google Business Profile set up properly.