canonry

Bing Webmaster Tools Setup

Canonry integrates with Bing Webmaster Tools (WMT) via API key to pull URL coverage data, inspect indexing status, view search performance, and submit pages for indexing.

You can complete the entire setup via the web dashboard or the CLI — both are documented below.

Prerequisites

Step 1 — Verify Your Site in Bing Webmaster Tools

If your site isn’t already verified:

  1. Go to Bing Webmaster Tools
  2. Sign in with your Microsoft account
  3. Click Add a Site and enter your domain
  4. Choose a verification method:
    • Auto-verify via Google Search Console (fastest — imports your GSC-verified sites)
    • CNAME record — add a DNS record
    • XML file — upload a verification file to your site root
    • Meta tag — add a meta tag to your homepage
  5. Complete verification

Tip: If you’ve already verified your site in Google Search Console, Bing can import it automatically — this is the fastest path.

Step 2 — Get Your API Key

  1. In Bing Webmaster Tools, click the gear icon (Settings) in the top navigation
  2. Go to API Access
  3. Copy the API Key

The API key grants access to all sites verified under your Bing WMT account.

Step 3 — Configure the API Key in Canonry

This is a one-time setup that stores your Bing API key so canonry can authenticate with the Bing WMT API.

Web UI

  1. Go to Settings (gear icon in the sidebar)
  2. Find the Bing Webmaster Tools card
  3. Enter your API Key
  4. Click Configure Bing (or Update API key if already configured)

The card shows “Ready” when the key is saved.

CLI

canonry bing connect <project> --api-key <YOUR_API_KEY>

If you omit --api-key, canonry will prompt you for it interactively.

Step 4 — Connect Bing to a Project and Set Your Site

Web UI

  1. Navigate to your project page
  2. The Bing integration section shows your connection status
  3. If connected, select your site from the dropdown of verified sites
  4. Canonry saves the selection and begins pulling coverage data

CLI

# Connect (if not done in Step 3)
canonry bing connect <project> --api-key <YOUR_API_KEY>

# List all verified sites
canonry bing sites <project>

# Set the one you want
canonry bing set-site <project> https://example.com/

The site URL must exactly match what’s verified in Bing WMT (including trailing slash if present).

Usage

Web UI

The project page shows Bing Webmaster data including:

CLI

# Connection status
canonry bing status <project>

# URL coverage summary (indexed / not indexed / unknown)
canonry bing coverage <project>

# Search performance data (impressions, clicks, CTR)
canonry bing performance <project>

# Inspect a specific URL
canonry bing inspect <project> https://example.com/page

# View all inspected URLs
canonry bing inspections <project>

# Submit a single URL for indexing
canonry bing request-indexing <project> https://example.com/new-page

# Submit all unindexed URLs
canonry bing request-indexing <project> --all-unindexed

# Disconnect
canonry bing disconnect <project>

IndexNow (Optional)

IndexNow sends an instant crawl signal to Bing: “these URLs changed, re-crawl them now.” Without it, Bing discovers pages on its own schedule (days to weeks). With IndexNow, typically hours.

Setup

  1. Generate a key (any unique string, e.g. a UUID)
  2. Host a key file at your site root: 
    https://example.com/<key>.txt

    File content: just the key string, nothing else.

  3. Submit URLs: 
    curl -X POST "https://www.bing.com/indexnow" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" \
  -d '{
    "host": "example.com",
    "key": "<key>",
    "keyLocation": "https://example.com/<key>.txt",
    "urlList": [
      "https://example.com/",
      "https://example.com/page-1"
    ]
  }'

Expected response: 202 Accepted

Note: IndexNow only covers Bing (and Yandex). It does NOT affect Google, ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.

Submission Limits

Bing WMT enforces these limits on URL submissions via the API:

The canonry bing request-indexing --all-unindexed command respects these limits automatically.

Troubleshooting

No Bing connection found

You haven’t connected Bing to this project yet.

UI: Go to Settings and enter your Bing API key, then return to the project page.

CLI:

canonry bing connect <project> --api-key <key>

Bing API returned 401 Unauthorized

Your API key is invalid or expired. Get a fresh key from Bing WMT → Settings → API Access.

UI: Go to Settings, update the API key in the Bing Webmaster Tools card.

CLI:

canonry bing disconnect <project>
canonry bing connect <project> --api-key <NEW_KEY>

No site URL configured

After connecting, you must select which site to use.

UI: On the project page, select your site from the Bing site dropdown.

CLI:

canonry bing sites <project>           # see available sites
canonry bing set-site <project> <url>  # set the active site

Site not found or empty sites list

Your site may not be verified in Bing WMT, or the API key belongs to a different account. Check at Bing Webmaster Tools.

Coverage shows mostly “Unknown”

This is normal for first-time setup. Bing hasn’t inspected most URLs yet. Run inspections to populate coverage data:

UI: Use the URL inspection feature on the project page to inspect key URLs.

CLI:

canonry bing inspect <project> https://example.com/important-page

Or submit URLs for indexing to prompt Bing to crawl them:

canonry bing request-indexing <project> --all-unindexed
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