What can you check in Bing Search Console?

Bing Search Console lets you check how Bing finds, crawls, indexes and displays your website. Its reports cover search performance, indexed URLs, crawl and technical issues, sitemap processing, URL-level diagnostics, backlinks, keyword opportunities and selected SEO recommendations. Used together, these checks help you distinguish between a ranking problem, an indexing problem and an issue affecting how Bing crawls or interprets a page.

Search performance

The Search Performance report shows how your pages perform in Bing’s organic search results. You can review:

• Impressions: how often a page or search result was shown to a searcher.
• Clicks: how often users selected your result.
• Click-through rate: the relationship between impressions and clicks.
• Average position: the reported average position of your result for the selected data.
• Queries: the searches that generated visibility or visits.
• Pages: which URLs received impressions and clicks.
• Countries, devices and search appearance: where visibility occurred and, where available, how the result was presented.

Use these metrics to identify pages with high impressions but relatively few clicks. That pattern may indicate that the title, meta description or search intent alignment needs attention. Pages with clicks but limited impressions may already satisfy searchers but need stronger topical coverage, internal linking or technical support to become visible for more relevant searches. Compare equivalent date ranges rather than relying on a single day, because search demand and reporting data can vary.

Indexing status

Bing Search Console helps you assess whether important URLs are eligible to appear in search. URL inspection can show whether Bing has discovered a URL, whether it has been crawled, whether it is present in the index and whether any known issue is preventing inclusion.

When a page is not indexed, check the reason rather than assuming that requesting a crawl will resolve it. Common causes include a noindex directive, a blocked crawl, a canonical pointing to another URL, an unavailable response, duplicate content or a page that Bing does not currently consider suitable for indexing. Indexing is not guaranteed simply because a URL is submitted or technically accessible.

Individual URL details

The URL Inspection feature provides a page-level check. It can help you review information such as:

• Whether the URL is known to Bing.
• Whether the URL can be crawled and indexed.
• The latest available crawl information.
• Detected sitemap references, where reported.
• Canonicalisation signals.
• Relevant SEO or markup observations.

Inspect a URL after publishing a new page, changing important content, correcting a technical issue or investigating a sudden loss of visibility. Check the live page as well as the stored information where the interface provides both options. If the page has recently changed, allow time for Bing to recrawl it before judging the effect of the update.

Crawl issues and technical problems

Crawl-related reports can reveal problems that prevent Bingbot from retrieving pages or resources. Investigate errors involving server responses, redirects, timeouts, inaccessible resources, blocked paths and repeated URL variations. A crawl issue may affect a single page, a directory or a wider part of the site, so assess the pattern before making changes.

Useful checks include whether important URLs return a successful status, whether redirect chains are unnecessarily long, whether canonical and internal-link signals agree, and whether security or server controls are blocking legitimate crawlers. A page that works in a normal browser can still be difficult for a crawler to access if it depends on unreliable scripts, requires authentication or returns different content to automated requests.

Site Scan findings

Where Site Scan is available for the property, it can crawl the site and report common technical and on-page issues. Findings may include broken links, missing or duplicated titles and descriptions, redirect problems, missing tags, excessive page depth and other issues affecting crawlability or page interpretation.

Treat automated findings as a prioritisation list rather than an instruction to change every page immediately. Confirm each issue against the page template, the purpose of the URL and the wider site structure. Fix problems that affect important content, accessibility, indexability or user experience first. Some warnings may be appropriate for particular page types, while repeated issues often indicate a template or CMS configuration problem.

Sitemaps and URL discovery

The Sitemaps area lets you check whether Bing has received a submitted XML sitemap and whether it has been processed successfully. Review the reported status and any errors, then compare the sitemap with the URLs you actually want indexed.

A useful sitemap should contain canonical, indexable URLs that return a successful response. Remove redirected, blocked, duplicate, thin or deliberately excluded URLs where appropriate. A sitemap helps discovery, but it does not force indexing or replace internal links. If the sitemap contains many URLs that cannot be indexed, investigate the underlying publishing or canonicalisation rules rather than repeatedly resubmitting it.

Robots.txt rules

The robots.txt testing function can help you check whether a URL is allowed or disallowed for Bing’s crawler under the relevant rules. Use it when a page is not being crawled, when a new directive has been added or when a site migration has changed crawler access.

Remember that robots.txt controls crawling, not guaranteed removal from search. Blocking a URL can also prevent Bing from seeing page-level directives or following content signals. Do not use robots.txt as a substitute for noindex when the aim is to keep an accessible page out of search results.

Backlinks and referring sites

The backlinks report provides information about links that Bing has associated with your site. You can use it to identify linking domains, pages receiving external links and the pages on your website that attract references.

Backlink data is not necessarily complete, so use it as one source of evidence rather than a definitive list. Look for links to important commercial and informational pages, links pointing to outdated URLs and patterns that may indicate missed redirect opportunities. The report can also support content planning by showing which subjects or resources attract attention from other sites. Avoid treating a larger link count as an automatic sign of better SEO; relevance, editorial context and the quality of the linking page matter more.

Keyword and content opportunities

Keyword research features can show related searches and potential topics based on Bing search data. These insights can help you compare the language used by searchers with the wording on your pages, identify gaps in supporting content and refine page titles or headings.

Use keyword suggestions alongside your existing search performance data and knowledge of your customers. A term is not automatically suitable because it appears in a research report. Check its intent, relevance to your services and whether an existing page already addresses it. Create or improve content to answer the underlying need rather than inserting variations of a phrase unnaturally.

SEO recommendations and markup checks

Bing may provide recommendations relating to page titles, descriptions, headings, image attributes, structured data or other on-page signals. These checks are useful for finding omissions and consistency problems, particularly across large sites.

Recommendations should be reviewed in context. A meta description can influence how a result is presented, but it does not guarantee a particular snippet. Structured data must accurately describe visible page content and should not be added solely to obtain enhanced search features. Correcting an issue also does not guarantee an immediate ranking change, because search visibility depends on relevance, quality, competition, crawling and many other signals.

How to use the reports together

1. Start with Search Performance to identify a change in clicks, impressions, position or affected pages.
2. Inspect representative URLs, including pages that gained visibility and pages that declined.
3. Check indexing, canonical, crawl and robots.txt information for the affected URLs.
4. Review sitemap processing and confirm that important pages are included correctly.
5. Use Site Scan and server logs, where available, to identify wider technical patterns.
6. Apply the smallest appropriate fix, then monitor the relevant report after Bing has had time to recrawl and process the change.

This combined approach is more reliable than reacting to a single metric. For example, falling clicks with stable impressions points towards result presentation or search intent, whereas falling impressions alongside an indexing or crawl issue suggests a technical investigation. Bing Search Console is therefore most useful as an evidence source for diagnosis, not as a guarantee that every submitted page will rank or be indexed.