Submitting URLs to Bing by hand

When submitting by hand is the right call

Hand submission is the correct tool for three jobs, and a poor one for a fourth.

It is correct for a full-site announcement. Automatic submission covers discovered and changed URLs only, enabling it imports no history, and full-site submission is manual. A site that switches automatic submission on today has pages that existed yesterday and will not be announced until they change; announcing them is a deliberate action someone takes once.

It is correct for a one-off correction: a page fixed after an error, an address that was announced with a mistake, a page an engine should look at again now rather than whenever it next passes.

It is correct where nothing else is possible, such as a site published by copying files to a server, with no publishing event for anything to hook into.

It is a poor permanent arrangement. Manual submission happens when somebody remembers, and the changes that most need announcing are made in busy weeks. Nothing fails visibly when it stops, which is why the setup methods that follow publishing are described under the other setup routes.

The Submit URLs tool in Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools is Bing's own console for site owners, and it has a form for submitting addresses. It needs a Bing Webmaster Tools account and a site verified in it; the console documents the verification methods itself.

Bing introduced the current form of this quota in January 2019: up to 10,000 addresses a day, with no monthly quota. The figure is a ceiling, not an allowance every site receives. Bing sets each site's quota from signals that include how long the site has been verified and its impressions, and the figure that applies to a site is shown next to the Submit URLs option in the console.

In November 2025 Bing added a note to that announcement: Microsoft now recommends IndexNow as the primary method for real-time URL submission. The form remains; Bing's own advice is to use it for occasional jobs rather than as the main channel.

Submitting a sitemap to Bing

A sitemap is a different kind of message. It does not say that something changed now; it lists the addresses a site wants found, optionally with the date each page last changed. Bing reads it in two ways: a sitemap submitted in Bing Webmaster Tools, or a Sitemap: line in the site's robots.txt file, which needs no console at all.

Bing says it revisits a known sitemap regularly, typically at least once a day, and that one sitemap file can carry up to 50,000 addresses. Its advice on the date field is that it should reflect when the page content last changed, not when the sitemap file was generated. A date that changes on every rebuild tells an engine nothing.

Submitting a sitemap once is a manual step; keeping it current is not, because the file is produced by the site. How a sitemap and IndexNow divide the work is set out under IndexNow vs sitemaps. The old practice of pinging Google with a sitemap address no longer works: Google retired that endpoint in 2023.

Sending one IndexNow request yourself

The protocol itself can be used by hand. A single address goes in an ordinary HTTPS request to an endpoint, carrying the address and the key:

https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow?url=https://www.example.com/page&key=your-key

The address must be URL-encoded, and the key must already be published as a text file on the same hostname, at /<key>.txt or at the location the request names. Without that file an engine has no way to attribute the request to the hostname's owner, which is why a request with a missing or unreadable key is refused with a 403. The rules for the file are set out under the key file.

A list goes in one POST request with a JSON body naming the host, the key and a list of addresses, up to 10,000 of them per request. A submission sent to one participating engine is shared with the others, so the request is sent once, not once per engine. The answer is a status code, and response codes sets out what each one means.

This is the route for a full-site announcement through IndexNow: a list built once from the site's own addresses and sent in batches. It reaches every engine that takes part in the protocol, not only Bing.

Which manual route fits which job

For a single correction to Bing, the console form is quickest if the site is already verified. For a full-site announcement, an IndexNow list reaches more engines in fewer steps. A sitemap does a different job from both: it is the standing inventory engines return to, and it is worth having whatever else is in place.

Getting a new site into Bing's index

Bing names four ways it discovers addresses: IndexNow submissions, XML sitemaps, crawlable internal links and links from relevant outside sites. Outside links are the one a site owner cannot simply set up; the routes on this page cover the other three, and for a new site they fit together in this order:

1. Add and verify the site in Bing Webmaster Tools

   A site already verified in Google Search Console can be imported from it and arrives verified; otherwise Bing asks for a file, a meta tag or a DNS record. Bing says data for a newly added site usually takes 48 hours to appear.

2. Give Bing the sitemap

   Submit it in the console or list it in robots.txt, so Bing has the whole inventory at once rather than address by address.

3. Keep every page reachable by links

   Bing asks for standard <a href> links to each important address, and for a robots.txt that does not block Bingbot.

4. Announce the pages

   An IndexNow list for the whole site, as described above, or the Submit URLs form for a handful.

5. Inspect what happened

   The URL Inspection tool in the console shows when an address was discovered, crawled and indexed, and can request indexing from the same daily quota as Submit URLs.

Links from other sites still count for a new site. Bing says it needs to see at least one link pointing to a site to find it, and that even a submitted page has to be crawled and assessed before it appears in the index.

Bing may still leave out addresses that do not meet its selection criteria, as the limits below explain.

What manual submission does not do

No route on this page makes a page indexed. Each tells an engine where to look; whether it fetches the address, keeps the page or shows it for a query is the engine's own decision, made on its own criteria. Bing also counts every crawl, including one prompted by a submission, towards a site's crawl quota, so announcing pages that have not changed spends attention on nothing.

None of it reaches Google. Google does not participate in IndexNow, and Bing Webmaster Tools belongs to Bing. Google's own manual routes are the URL Inspection tool in Search Console for a few addresses and a sitemap for many, as set out under IndexNow and Google. Every engine's routes side by side are under submitting a site to search engines.

Repeating a submission does not speed anything up. An address sent twice is an address the engine was already told about; a refusal for volume is the engine limiting what it accepts, not an invitation to retry harder.

Checking that it arrived

Each route leaves its own trace. The console form and the sitemap report their status in Bing Webmaster Tools. A request sent by hand returns a status code at once: a 200 or a 202 means it was received, and anything else names the problem. How to read the record when submissions are automatic is set out under checking that a submission was sent.

FAQ