How to Submit a Sitemap to Bing and Monitor Index Coverage

Last updated: October 11, 2026

Key Takeaways

• If one of the three basics breaks, sitemap submission by itself will not fix indexing.
• Once your site is verified, submitting a sitemap in Bing Webmaster Tools usually takes 5 to 10 minutes.
• Clean up bad URLs before submission so the coverage report is easier to interpret.
• Check submitted, crawled, and error URLs weekly, or more often for fast-changing sites.

If Bing is not indexing your pages the way you expect, the fix is usually simple: submit the XML sitemap in Bing Webmaster Tools, then watch the Index Coverage report for crawl and indexing problems. In this guide to How to Submit a Sitemap to Bing and Monitor Index Coverage, that is often the quickest way to help Bingbot find new or updated URLs without guessing what went wrong.

What Actually Determines the Right Answer Here

If your site already has a clean XML sitemap, a verified Bing Webmaster Tools account, and pages that return 200 status codes, then submitting the sitemap is the right first move. If any of those three pieces is broken, sitemap submission alone will not solve the problem, and that is where people waste days.

The practical question is not “How do I upload a file?” It is “What needs to be true for Bing to trust this sitemap and use it to crawl the right URLs?” The answer depends on the state of your site. A sitemap can speed discovery, but it cannot override robots.txt blocks, noindex tags, canonical confusion, or thin pages that Bing decides not to keep.

Here is the cleanest way to think about it:

If you want the shortest answer, it is this: submit the sitemap in Bing Webmaster Tools, then use the Index Coverage report to find out whether Bing is seeing, crawling, and indexing the URLs you care about. Quick check: if you already know your sitemap is valid and your pages are indexable, you are ready to submit; if not, fix the block first. For more on crawl and index signals, see the Bing Webmaster Guidelines and Google Search Central on sitemaps.

How do I submit a sitemap to Bing?

You submit a sitemap to Bing through Bing Webmaster Tools, and the whole job usually takes about 5 to 10 minutes once the site is verified. If you have not verified the site yet, do that first, because Bing will not treat a sitemap as yours until it can confirm ownership; if the ownership setup is unclear, consult a professional and review Bing’s site verification help.

Start here if you need the direct path:

1. Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools.
2. Add and verify your site if it is not already in your account.
3. Open the Sitemaps section in the left navigation.
4. Paste the sitemap URL, such as https://example.com/sitemap.xml or a sitemap index file.
5. Submit it and wait for Bing to process it.
6. Return later to check whether Bing reports URLs discovered, crawled, or blocked.

A few details matter here. If your site uses multiple sitemaps, submit the sitemap index file, not each child sitemap one by one. That is the cleaner choice for sites with product pages, blog posts, and category pages split across several files. If the site is small, a single sitemap file is fine.

If you run WordPress, most SEO plugins can generate a sitemap automatically. Yoast SEO and Rank Math both do this, and both usually expose a sitemap URL that Bing can read. If you use a platform like Shopify, the sitemap is typically generated for you already. The job then becomes finding the right URL and verifying that Bing can fetch it.

The mistake I see most often is people submitting a sitemap that includes blocked URLs, redirected URLs, or pages with canonical tags pointing elsewhere. That can create noise. Bing may still crawl them, but it does not guarantee indexing. A sitemap is a discovery map, not a ranking promise.

One good habit: after submission, open the sitemap URL in a browser and make sure it returns XML, not an error page, login screen, or HTML shell. If a human cannot fetch it cleanly, a crawler often struggles too. Quick check: if your sitemap URL is public, valid XML, and submitted in a verified Bing property, you have done the actual submission.

What should I check before I submit the sitemap?

If your sitemap contains bad URLs, then fix that before you submit it, because a clean sitemap makes the coverage report easier to read. If the sitemap is messy, Bing will still tell you something, but the signal is harder to trust.

Before submission, I would check these items in order:

1. Each URL returns a 200 status code, not 3xx, 4xx, or 5xx.
2. The page is not blocked by robots.txt.
3. The page does not carry a noindex directive in the HTML or HTTP header.
4. The canonical tag points to the preferred version of the page.
5. The URL is in the correct protocol and host, such as https and the main domain.
6. The sitemap file is within sitemap protocol limits: up to 50,000 URLs per file and no more than 50 MB uncompressed for a single sitemap file.

Those limits come from the sitemap protocol used by search engines and standards bodies, so they are not a Bing-only quirk. If you are above those limits, use a sitemap index file and split the URLs logically.

This is where standard advice often gets sloppy. People say, “Just submit the sitemap,” as if every URL inside is automatically indexable. That is not right. If a page is blocked by robots.txt, Bing may discover it from the sitemap but still refuse to crawl it. If a page is marked noindex, Bing may crawl it and then keep it out of the index. If the canonical points to another URL, Bing may treat your page as a duplicate and choose the canonical target instead; if that setup is uncertain, consult a professional and compare Bing’s guidance with the canonicalization documentation from Google Search Central.

I would also check whether the sitemap includes pages that should not be indexed at all: internal search results, filter combinations, printer pages, staging URLs, or tag archives with no unique value. Those URLs do not help coverage. They clutter it.

Authoritative references worth keeping nearby are the Bing Webmaster Tools help pages and the Sitemaps protocol documentation from sitemaps.org, which is maintained by major search engine vendors. Quick check: if your sitemap only lists pages you actually want Bing to index, you are ready for the next step.

How do I monitor index coverage in Bing Webmaster Tools?

You monitor index coverage by checking Bing Webmaster Tools for submitted URLs, crawled URLs, and errors at least once a week, and more often if the site changes daily. If your site publishes content every day, daily checks make sense. If it is a small brochure site, weekly is usually enough.

The logic is simple: the sitemap tells Bing what exists, and the coverage data tells you what Bing did with it. If the numbers move, the site is changing, or Bing is encountering a new obstacle. If the numbers do not move for several weeks, either the site is stable or Bing has stopped caring about specific sections.

When I look at coverage, I would sort problems into four buckets:

• Discovered but not indexed
• Crawled but not indexed
• Blocked from crawling
• Errors during fetch or rendering

Those buckets matter more than raw counts. A page can be discovered through the sitemap and still never make it into the index if it duplicates another URL, lacks value, or hits quality filters. A page can be crawled but not indexed if Bing can fetch it but does not see a reason to store it.

Use the report to compare intent against reality. If your sitemap contains 1,000 URLs and only 300 are indexed, do not panic first. Ask which 700 are excluded and why. If the excluded set is mostly pagination, tags, faceted URLs, or duplicate product variants, that may be normal.

The best habit is to review the same 10 to 20 priority URLs every time you check coverage. That keeps comparisons consistent. Coverage reports change shape, and a single broad number can hide the page types that matter most. Quick check: if the report shows that your priority URLs are indexed and the rest are mostly low-value pages, you are probably fine.

What do I do when Bing reports problems?

If Bing reports problems, then fix the cause in the page or server first, not in the sitemap. The sitemap is usually the messenger, not the disease.

Here is the decision path I would use:

1. Open the affected URL in Bing Webmaster Tools and note the exact issue: blocked, error, duplicate, or excluded.
2. Check whether the page returns 200, redirects once, or fails entirely.
3. Inspect robots.txt for disallow rules that match the URL path.
4. Inspect the page source or headers for noindex and canonical tags.
5. Compare the sitemap URL to the actual preferred URL format.
6. Fix the issue, then resubmit the sitemap or request re-crawl for the page.
7. Recheck coverage after Bing has had time to revisit the URL, which can take days rather than minutes.

If the issue is “discovered, not indexed,” I would look at page quality and duplication before anything else. If the issue is “blocked by robots.txt,” then the fix is obvious: change the rule if indexing is intended. If the issue is a server error, fix the server. A sitemap cannot make a 500 response indexable.

This is also the point where patience matters. Bing may not reflect changes immediately. A newly fixed page may need several crawl cycles before the coverage report updates. That delay is normal, not a sign that the fix failed.

One trade-off worth saying out loud: if you force every low-value page into the sitemap, the coverage report becomes noisier and less useful. I would rather have 200 strong URLs than 2,000 mixed-quality URLs if the business goal is to get the right pages indexed. Quick check: if the error is technical, repair the page; if the error is quality-related, improve or remove the page.

When is the standard advice wrong?

The standard advice is wrong when your site is large, dynamic, blocked, or intentionally selective about what should be indexed. In those cases, a simple sitemap submission is not enough.

Here are the edge cases that break the usual playbook:

• Staging or prelaunch site → What changes: indexing should not happen yet. What to do instead: keep it blocked with authentication or noindex, and wait until launch to verify and submit the live sitemap.
• Very large ecommerce catalog → What changes: URL volume and duplication explode. What to do instead: submit a sitemap index, split by product type or update cadence, and keep filters out of the sitemap.
• International site with separate language versions → What changes: Bing may need clearer signals about language and regional targeting. What to do instead: make sure each locale has its own clean URLs and consistent canonicalization.
• Sitewide redesign → What changes: old URLs may redirect, and coverage reports can look chaotic for 1 to 3 weeks. What to do instead: keep the old sitemap data around long enough to see whether redirects and canonicals are resolving properly.
• JavaScript-heavy site → What changes: Bing may need more rendering effort to see the final content. What to do instead: verify that critical content appears in rendered HTML, not only after client-side interaction.
• Publisher site with strict editorial controls → What changes: not every page should be indexed. What to do instead: exclude thin archives, tag pages, and duplicate feeds from the sitemap on purpose.

The standard advice also fails when people assume Bing coverage should match Google coverage. It often does not, and that is normal. Different engines make different indexing decisions. If Bing is missing a page that Google has indexed, do not assume the sitemap is broken. Compare the page quality, canonical target, and crawl accessibility first.

This section is the one most guides skip, and that is exactly why readers get stuck. Quick check: if your site has thousands of URLs, multiple locales, heavy JavaScript, or a launch in progress, you need the edge-case playbook, not the beginner version.

How should I use Bing’s coverage data to decide what to fix next?

You should use coverage data to decide whether the problem is discovery, crawling, or index selection, because those are three different fixes. If you treat them as one problem, you will waste time changing pages that Bing already knows about.

Use this order:

1. Discovery problem: Bing does not appear to know the URL exists.
   – Best fix: submit the sitemap, add internal links, and make sure the URL is publicly reachable.

2. Crawling problem: Bing knows the URL but cannot fetch it cleanly.
   – Best fix: check robots.txt, status codes, and server reliability.

3. Index selection problem: Bing can crawl the page but does not index it.
   – Best fix: improve uniqueness, consolidate duplicates, and strengthen the page’s purpose.

4. Priority problem: Bing indexes the page, but not the one you care about most.
   – Best fix: improve internal linking and canonical targeting so the preferred page is obvious.

I would not chase every excluded URL. That way lies busywork. Instead, pick a small set of pages that matter: homepage, top categories, top product pages, main articles, and any landing pages tied to revenue or leads. Then watch those pages over time. A clean sitemap plus clear coverage for the important URLs is usually better than a perfect report full of junk pages.

If you want a concrete cadence, review newly published pages within 24 to 72 hours, then review the full coverage picture weekly for the first month after a major update.

Drafted with AI; not yet reviewed by a person.