How to Set Up Bing Webmaster Tools for Shopify (Step-by-Step)
Most Shopify merchants set up Google Search Console on day one and never think about Bing again. That’s a mistake — and an easy one to fix. Bing Webmaster Tools is free, takes about ten minutes to set up, and it’s the only way to see how your store performs across the entire Microsoft search ecosystem.
This guide walks you through the whole process: creating an account, verifying your Shopify store (the fast way and the manual way), submitting your sitemap, and finding the reports that are actually worth checking.
Why Bother With Bing for a Shopify Store?
Bing is bigger than its reputation suggests, because its index powers far more than bing.com:
- DuckDuckGo sources most of its web results from Bing.
- Yahoo Search is powered by Bing.
- ChatGPT search uses Bing’s index to find and cite web pages, including product pages.
- Microsoft Copilot — built into Windows and Edge — pulls answers and shopping results from Bing.
If your store isn’t indexed by Bing, you’re invisible in all of those places at once. And because far fewer stores compete seriously for Bing visibility, the merchants who do set things up properly tend to get more out of it than the same effort would earn on Google.
To be clear about what Bing Webmaster Tools does and doesn’t do: it helps Bing find and index your pages, and it shows you data about how they perform. It does not guarantee rankings — that still depends on your content, your products, and your competition. But you can’t rank at all if you’re not indexed, and this is where indexing starts.
If your store is currently invisible on Bing, see why your Shopify store isn’t showing up on Bing for a full diagnosis. Otherwise, let’s set things up.
Step 1: Create a Bing Webmaster Tools Account
- Go to bing.com/webmasters.
- Click Sign in. You can use a Microsoft, Google, or Facebook account.
- If you’re planning to import from Google Search Console (recommended — see below), sign in with the same Google account you use for Search Console. It makes the next step one click instead of ten.
That’s it — you now have an account. The next step is proving to Bing that you own your store.
Step 2: Verify Your Shopify Store
You have two routes: the fast path (import from Google Search Console) and the manual path (meta tag or DNS). Use the fast path if you can.
The Fast Path: Import From Google Search Console
If your store is already verified in Google Search Console, Bing will accept Google’s word for it. This is by far the easiest option:
- In Bing Webmaster Tools, choose Import from Google Search Console (you’ll see this option when adding your first site).
- Sign in with the Google account that owns your Search Console property.
- Grant Bing read access when prompted.
- Select your store’s property from the list and click Import.
Bing verifies your site instantly and even imports your submitted sitemaps. If you used this path, you can skip straight to Step 3.
Manual Option A: Meta Tag in theme.liquid
If you don’t use Google Search Console, the meta tag method is the most Shopify-friendly manual option:
- In Bing Webmaster Tools, click Add a site, enter your store’s full URL (e.g.
https://yourstore.com), and choose the HTML Meta Tag verification method. - Copy the meta tag Bing gives you. It looks like
<meta name="msvalidate.01" content="..." />. - In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store → Themes.
- On your live theme, click the ⋯ (three dots) → Edit code.
- Open layout/theme.liquid.
- Paste the meta tag on its own line just below the opening
<head>tag. - Click Save.
- Back in Bing Webmaster Tools, click Verify.
One caveat: if you switch themes later, the tag disappears with the old theme and your verification breaks. Make a note to re-add it whenever you publish a new theme.
Manual Option B: DNS CNAME Record
If you’d rather not touch theme code — or you want verification that survives theme changes — use DNS:
- In Bing Webmaster Tools, choose the DNS CNAME verification method and copy the record values Bing provides.
- Log in to your domain registrar (or Shopify’s domain settings, if you bought the domain through Shopify) and open DNS settings.
- Add a CNAME record with the host and target value Bing gave you.
- Save, then click Verify in Bing Webmaster Tools.
DNS changes can take a while to propagate, so if verification fails at first, wait an hour and try again.
Step 3: Submit Your Shopify Sitemap
Shopify automatically generates a sitemap for every store at https://yourstore.com/sitemap.xml. It updates itself whenever you add or remove products, collections, pages, or blog posts — you never edit it by hand.
To submit it:
- In Bing Webmaster Tools, open Sitemaps in the left sidebar.
- Click Submit sitemap.
- Enter your full sitemap URL:
https://yourstore.com/sitemap.xml. - Click Submit.
The status will show as pending at first, then change to Success once Bing processes it. For a deeper walkthrough — including what to do when the sitemap processes but shows zero indexed pages — see the full guide to submitting your Shopify sitemap to Bing.
Skip the busywork. Bing SEO: IndexNow for Bing auto-submits every product, collection, page, and blog change to Bing the moment it happens — no dashboards, no manual pings. Free to install, rated 4.6 stars.
Step 4: A Tour of the Reports That Matter
Bing Webmaster Tools has a lot of screens. These are the four worth actually using.
Site Explorer
Site Explorer shows your store the way Bing’s crawler sees it — a folder-style tree of every URL Bing knows about, with each URL’s index status. It’s the fastest way to answer “does Bing know this page exists?” at scale. Look for sections of your store (say, /collections/ or /blogs/) where lots of URLs sit in a discovered-but-not-indexed state — that’s your signal something needs attention.
URL Inspection
The Bing equivalent of Google’s URL Inspection tool. Paste in any single URL — a new product page, for example — and Bing tells you whether it’s indexed, when it was last crawled, and flags any SEO or markup issues it found. Use it whenever one specific page seems missing from Bing.
IndexNow Dashboard
The IndexNow report shows every URL that has been pushed to Bing via the IndexNow protocol — instant notifications rather than waiting for a crawl. If you haven’t set up IndexNow yet, this report will be empty; more on fixing that in the next section.
Search Performance
This is your clicks-and-impressions report: which queries surface your store on Bing, which pages get clicked, and how both trend over time. Check it every few weeks rather than daily — search data is noisy in small windows. Remember it only covers Bing itself; traffic arriving from DuckDuckGo, ChatGPT, or Copilot won’t appear here even though Bing’s index made it possible.
Step 5: Turn On IndexNow Submissions
Everything above makes your store visible to Bing. But Bing still crawls on its own schedule — a new product might sit unnoticed for days or weeks between crawls.
IndexNow fixes this. It’s an open protocol (indexnow.org) supported by Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz, and Yep, that lets your site actively ping search engines the instant a URL is added, updated, or deleted. Instead of waiting to be crawled, you tell Bing what changed. (Google doesn’t participate in IndexNow — your Google setup stays as-is.)
Shopify has no built-in IndexNow support, and doing it manually means generating a key, hosting a key file, and firing API calls every time anything changes — impractical for a live store. The realistic route is an app that hooks into Shopify’s own change events. See the full walkthrough: how to add IndexNow to Shopify.
Once IndexNow is running, the IndexNow dashboard in Bing Webmaster Tools starts filling with your submitted URLs — and you’ll often see new pages appear in Site Explorer noticeably faster than crawl-and-wait ever managed.
Ten minutes of setup, then it runs itself. Pair Bing Webmaster Tools with Bing SEO: IndexNow for Bing — the free ArcSpeed app pings Bing and Yandex automatically whenever your catalog changes, and can bulk-submit your existing URLs on day one.
FAQ
Do I need Bing Webmaster Tools if I already use Google Search Console?
Yes — they’re separate indexes. Google Search Console only affects Google. Bing Webmaster Tools covers Bing, and by extension DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, ChatGPT search, and Microsoft Copilot. The good news: your existing Search Console verification makes Bing setup nearly instant via the import option.
How long until my Shopify store shows up on Bing after verification?
There’s no fixed timeline. Verifying and submitting a sitemap tells Bing where to look, but crawling and indexing happen on Bing’s schedule — anywhere from days to weeks for a new store. Using IndexNow to push URLs directly usually shortens the wait, though indexing is never instant or guaranteed.
Which verification method should I use for Shopify?
Import from Google Search Console if your store is already verified there — it’s one click. Otherwise, the meta tag in theme.liquid is easiest, and the DNS CNAME method is best if you want verification that survives theme changes.
Will Bing Webmaster Tools improve my rankings?
Not by itself. It gets your pages indexed and gives you data — both prerequisites for ranking, but not ranking factors. What you rank for still comes down to your content, products, and competition. For the bigger picture, see the guide to Bing SEO for Shopify.
Does setting up Bing help my products appear in ChatGPT?
It’s a necessary step. ChatGPT’s search feature pulls from Bing’s index, so pages Bing hasn’t indexed can’t be cited. For the full picture, read how to get Shopify products into ChatGPT.