How to submit a URL to Bing: IndexNow, the URL Submission tool and API

Submitting matters because Bing's index (the library it answers from) also feeds Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI summaries, so a page Bing hasn't crawled (visited and read) can't be considered there. This guide covers the four ways to submit, when to use each, the exact requests and the responses we got back, limits and errors, and how to check what Bing did.

Which way should you submit URLs to Bing?

Use IndexNow for every real change on a site you control, and keep manual URL Submission for the odd page you need Bing to look at today. That follows Bing's own URL Submission help page, which says that "While URL and Content Submission remain supported, they may be deprecated in the future as IndexNow adoption expands." The Bing Webmaster Tools guide compares the routes side by side; this page is the how-to.

Before you start

Every route except IndexNow needs a verified site in Bing Webmaster Tools, and IndexNow needs a key file on the host you submit for. Check these first:

1. A verified site. Sign in at bing.com/webmasters and add or import the site; verification is covered in the setup walkthrough.
2. A sitemap submitted. Bing's Content Submission FAQ says "Sitemaps are typically read once per day and help Bing discover new or updated content" (Bing). Submitting single URLs works on top of that, not instead of it.
3. Pages Bing is allowed to index. A URL blocked by robots.txt or carrying noindex won't be indexed however often you submit it. If that's your situation, start with why Bing hasn't indexed your site.

How do you submit a URL manually in Bing Webmaster Tools?

You submit URLs manually from the URL Submission tool: select your site, paste the URLs one per line and click Submit. As of October 2026, Bing's help page lists these steps (Bing):

1. Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools.
2. Select your verified site.
3. Open URL Submission (the steps on Bing's help page call it Submit URLs).
4. Enter one URL per line.
5. Click Submit.

What the same page says about the manual tool:

• "Submit up to 10,000 URLs per domain per day."
• "Quota resets daily at midnight UTC."
• "Quota applies at the domain level (not subdomains)."
• "The most recent 1,000 submitted URLs can be viewed in the Bing Webmaster Tools submission history."
• "Repeated manual submissions do not accelerate indexing."

Bing also says the quota "is set based on multiple parameters and may be revised over time", so read the remaining quota shown in your own account rather than counting on the headline number. If it's too low, Bing says "You can request an increase by contacting Bing Webmaster Tools support through your account." The same quota powers Request indexing in URL Inspection, which Bing describes as "based on the availability of URL submission quota" (Bing).

How do you submit URLs to Bing with IndexNow?

You submit URLs with IndexNow by hosting a key file on your site and sending the changed URLs, with that key, to one participating endpoint. The IndexNow documentation says you "must host a UTF-8 encoded text key file {your-key}.txt listing the key in the file at the root directory of your website", and that you can send "up to 10,000 URLs per post". Our IndexNow guide covers the protocol in full; here are the commands.

1. Create a key and host it. The key must be 8 to 128 characters of letters, numbers and dashes. Put it in a file named after itself at the root of the host:

KEY=$(uuidgen | tr -d '-' | tr 'A-Z' 'a-z')   # 32 hex characters
echo -n "$KEY" > "$KEY.txt"                    # upload to https://www.example.com/<key>.txt

2. Send the changed URLs. One POST to Bing's endpoint (or api.indexnow.org) is shared with the other participating engines:

curl -i -X POST "https://www.bing.com/indexnow" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" \
  --data '{
    "host": "www.example.com",
    "key": "<your-key>",
    "keyLocation": "https://www.example.com/<your-key>.txt",
    "urlList": [
      "https://www.example.com/pricing",
      "https://www.example.com/blog/new-post"
    ]
  }'

3. Read the response. We sent this request on October 17, 2026 with example.com and a placeholder key that isn't hosted anywhere, so it was refused. This is the body that came back:

{"errorCode":"UserForbiddedToAccessSite","message":"User is unauthorized to access the site. Please verify the site using the key and try again","details":null}

That 403 is what a missing or mismatched key file looks like. With a valid key you should get 200, or 202 on the first request while the key is checked. The documentation is explicit that "The HTTP 200 response code only indicates that the search engine has received your set of URLs" (IndexNow).

Two rules from the IndexNow FAQ keep you out of trouble: send only URLs that changed ("It is not designed for submitting every URL on your site at once"), and "wait at least 5 minutes between updates before resubmitting" the same URL. Deleted and redirected URLs should be sent too.

If your site runs on WordPress, the WordPress IndexNow guide covers the plugin route instead of code. To let FreshlyCited send IndexNow for a verified site, see FreshlyCited's IndexNow docs. Google isn't one of the engines that receive these requests; does Google support IndexNow explains what to use for Google instead.

If you're sending updates to Bing but still don't know whether Google has picked up the same pages, check them free before you resubmit anything.

How do you use the Bing URL Submission API?

The URL Submission API is Bing's Bing-only alternative to IndexNow: an authenticated call that submits up to 500 URLs per batch against the same daily domain quota. Bing's help page says it "Supports batch submission to submit multiple URLs in a single request (up to 500 URLs per batch)" and that "OAuth 2.0 authentication is required" (Bing). Microsoft's API access documentation also describes an API key generated in Bing Webmaster Tools, and notes that "the API key is generated for a user and not a site".

The batch call, in the JSON form Bing documents:

curl -i -X POST "https://ssl.bing.com/webmaster/api.svc/json/SubmitUrlbatch?apikey=<your-api-key>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" \
  --data '{
    "siteUrl": "https://www.example.com",
    "urlList": [
      "https://www.example.com/pricing",
      "https://www.example.com/blog/new-post"
    ]
  }'

A successful call returns 200 with {"d":null}. To see how much quota is left, Microsoft documents a GetUrlSubmissionQuota method that returns DailyQuota and MonthlyQuota:

curl -s "https://ssl.bing.com/webmaster/api.svc/json/GetUrlSubmissionQuota?siteUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com&apikey=<your-api-key>"

We ran both calls on October 17, 2026 with a placeholder key; each returned 400 with {"ErrorCode":3,"Message":"ERROR!!! InvalidApiKey"}, which is what to look for if a key is mistyped or was deleted.

From the API's FAQ on the same Bing page: it offers "99.9 percent service-level availability", and you can submit 404 URLs because that "helps Bing identify and deprecate dead links appropriately".

Is the Content Submission API still available?

Yes. As of October 2026 Bing still documents the Content Submission API as "still supported for now", alongside the same deprecation warning as URL Submission. It differs from every other route because it "allows programmatic submission of both URLs and full page content directly to Bing", so Bing can process the page without crawling it (Bing).

Details worth knowing before you build on it, all from Bing's FAQ:

• You send the whole HTTP response, base64-encoded, in an httpMessage field; "up to 10MB payload (HTTP uncompressed) is accepted per submission".
• It can override robots.txt: for content disallowed by robots.txt, "Bing may leverage and index this content and will not honor the robots.txt disallow rule". It still honors noindex.
• It doesn't replace sitemaps, and "it does not guarantee inclusion in search results."
• For large changes, "Throttle your submission to avoid being throttled by Bing."

What limits and errors will you hit?

The limits differ by route, and so do the errors. As of October 2026:

IndexNow response codes, from the IndexNow documentation, with the bodies we saw when we triggered them on October 17, 2026:

How do you check that Bing received and indexed the URL?

You check submissions in Bing Webmaster Tools: the IndexNow report for IndexNow traffic, submission history for manual URLs, and URL Inspection for any single page. According to Bing's IndexNow help page, each submitted URL's View panel shows crawl status, index status and first indexed time, and a Late submission flag "Indicates when the URL gets indexed through some other source like sitemaps." Its Important URLs Missed list shows URLs "indexed in the last 7 days but not through IndexNow", which tells you your setup isn't firing for some changes.

For one URL, URL Inspection "will check its status in Bing Index" and shows when the URL was discovered, crawled and indexed (Bing). Without an account, Bing suggests searching for url: followed by the address (Bing).

If a submitted URL still isn't indexed after a week or two, the submission wasn't the problem; work through why Bing isn't indexing your site. Once pages are indexed, the AI Performance report shows whether Copilot and Bing's AI summaries cite them, and IndexNow, Bing and AI answers covers how the two connect.

Where does FreshlyCited fit?

FreshlyCited's main job is Google: it checks which of your pages Google has indexed, pushes only the ones it hasn't, and re-checks them on days 1, 3 and 7. Bing comes as a free bonus on sites you verify, so you don't write the code above. You host a key file it generates; after that, every push of URLs on that site also goes out through IndexNow, shown in the app as "Sent to Bing". There's a per-site off switch, and only URLs on the verified host are sent. FreshlyCited doesn't check Bing's index, so the Bing Webmaster Tools reports above stay your source for what Bing did. The recipe to verify a site for IndexNow shows the setup.

On the Google side, which IndexNow doesn't reach, the same push checks which URLs Google already sees and pushes only the ones Google hasn't indexed, then re-checks on days 1, 3 and 7. For Google's own tools, see how to submit a URL to Google.

Bing tells you how to reach Bing; your pages still need to reach Google too. Check which of your pages Google has indexed, then send your next update to both engines in one step.