Microsoft Bing

Microsoft Bing is Microsoft's web search engine. People use it at bing.com and through Microsoft products, and other companies license its results: Microsoft's privacy statement says Bing receives search queries from partner services that build on it. For site owners, Microsoft runs Bing Webmaster Tools, where you verify a site, submit sitemaps and URLs, and read crawl and search statistics.

Microsoft also backs IndexNow, an open protocol that tells several search engines when a URL has been added, changed or deleted. In 2026 Bing Webmaster Tools gained an AI Performance report that counts how often a site is cited as a source in Microsoft Copilot and in AI-generated summaries in Bing. On the developer side, the public Bing Search APIs were retired on 11 August 2025 and Microsoft now points to Grounding with Bing Search inside Azure.

• Bing Webmaster Tools. A console for site owners to troubleshoot crawling and indexing, submit sitemaps and view statistics. Microsoft's API documentation lists rank and traffic stats, link details, keyword details and crawl stats among the data you can read.
• AI Performance report. Announced as a public preview on 10 February 2026, it shows total citations, average cited pages per day, sampled grounding queries and page-level citation counts across Copilot, Bing AI summaries and select partner integrations.
• Topics Portfolio. A beta tab added in October 2026 that groups grounding queries into themes. For each topic it shows an approximate topic size, the number of sites cited and the number of queries, plus a list of opportunity queries where others appear and you do not.
• IndexNow. A free, open-source protocol: you send a URL and a key to a participating search engine to say content changed. Microsoft says it reduces the need for exploratory crawling and many CMS and CDN products support it.
• Webmaster API. Programmatic access to site data, with URL and sitemap submission. The documentation says the legacy SOAP and POX APIs were to retire on 31 August 2026 and recommends moving to the REST APIs.
• Robots and snippet controls. Microsoft states Bing respects content-owner preferences set in robots.txt and other supported mechanisms. Its blog also announced support for the data-nosnippet HTML attribute in October 2025.
• Grounding with Bing Search. A tool for Azure AI agents to use public web results while answering. Developers do not receive the raw content, and answers must show citations and a link to the Bing query, per Microsoft's use and display rules.

• A 5-person content team tracking AI citations. The team verifies its site in Bing Webmaster Tools, opens the AI Performance report and checks which pages Copilot cites. Sampled grounding queries show the phrases that led to citations, so writers can see which topics earn mentions.
• An online shop that changes prices daily. The shop adds IndexNow to its publishing workflow so each changed product URL is announced once. Microsoft's blog says IndexNow supports faster updates for shopping and ads, which fits frequently changing catalogue pages.
• A developer building an Azure agent that needs fresh facts. Since the standalone search APIs were retired, the developer creates a Grounding with Bing Search resource and connects it to the agent. Microsoft notes only paid or pay-as-you-go Azure subscriptions qualify, not free-credit ones.

Searching needs nothing; open bing.com. Site owners sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools with a Microsoft account, add a site and verify ownership. Microsoft's API pages also describe a URL Submission plugin for WordPress and a way to generate an API key in the tool.

After verification you can submit a sitemap and use the reports for crawling, indexing and search performance. IndexNow needs a key file hosted on your domain and then an HTTP request per changed URL, or a batch POST of URLs. The Webmaster Tools app itself needs JavaScript, so its help pages could not be read directly for this review.

DuckDuckGo, Ecosia and Qwant each name Microsoft Bing as a source, so Bing is the index behind much of this list. That scale does not change the five tests: setup is instant, but independence is low for a buyer avoiding a single supplier.

Microsoft retired the standalone Bing Search APIs on 11 August 2025 and points customers to Grounding with Bing Search inside Azure AI Agents.

In our search engines ranking Microsoft Bing stands at #11 of 16: Yahoo Search sits directly above it and Google Search directly below. Established names take the places after the first three, in ranked order, and we give no numeric score.

Home market: the United States, one of 5 North America bases among the 16 products here.

Pricing as recorded: No user price stated; the standalone Search APIs were retired.

Bing search and Bing Webmaster Tools show no user price on the pages we read, and Microsoft documents them as services you sign in to with a Microsoft account. IndexNow is described as free and open source. The public Bing Search and Custom Search APIs were retired on 11 August 2025, so there is no standalone paid search API tier. Grounding with Bing Search is billed through Azure; Microsoft says usage can incur costs and refers to a pricing page that returned an error when we fetched it, so no amounts are given here.

Checked against bing.com for Best Search Engines in 2026, review date 7 November 2026.

Bing needs no setup for a searcher, and site owners reach it through the Bing Webmaster tools.

For a developer the position changed: the lifecycle notice says existing Search API instances were decommissioned and new sign-ups ended, with Grounding with Bing Search offered inside Azure AI Agents instead.

The services agreement names Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, as the contracting party for consumer services and covers Bing materials for personal, noncommercial use.

Independence here means none from Microsoft.

Microsoft's privacy statement covers Bing. It says signed-in users can view and clear search history in the privacy dashboard or in Bing Settings, and that clearing it does not delete the search logs, which are retained and de-identified.

Some de-identified Bing data is shared with selected third parties after a process meant to remove sensitive terms. Microsoft also states that Grounding with Bing Search sits outside the Azure compliance boundary, with different data processing terms. Hosting regions and certificates for Bing itself are not stated there.

Integrations the vendor names (10):

• Microsoft Copilot
• IndexNow
• Bing Webmaster API (REST)
• WordPress URL Submission plugin
• Grounding with Bing Search
• Azure AI Foundry Agent Service
• Microsoft Advertising
• Bing Places
• robots.txt
• XML sitemaps

Also in our records:

• For a developer the position changed: the lifecycle notice says existing Search API instances were decommissioned and new sign-ups ended, with Grounding with Bing Search offered inside Azure AI Agents instead.
• The standalone Bing Search APIs were retired on 11 August 2025
• Catalogue tags that point to the ecosystem: API retired.

Shared tags and a similar price model decide who is listed here; where none match, the neighbours in the ranking fill in.

A full write-up exists: Microsoft Bing alternatives, with reasons buyers leave and what moving involves.

• Brave Search (#3 of 16): Brave states that its results come from its own index and that its API has zero dependencies on Google or Bing, which makes it the sharpest contrast to a Bing-fed engine. The consumer site is ad-supported with an ad-free Premium tier (price not read). Its API sells at $5 per 1,000 requests with $5 monthly credit. Switch if you want a non-Bing index and an API that replaces the retired Bing one.
• Ecosia (#6 of 16): Ecosia is run by Ecosia GmbH as a not-for-profit social business and puts 100% of profits into climate action. Its results and ads come from Microsoft Bing, Google and EUSP depending on location, device and consent, and EUSP is only available in France. It therefore changes your Bing exposure only in part, and users can check which provider answered. Switch if you want to keep a Bing-class result set while funding tree planting.
• Google Search (#12 of 16): Google Search is the other full-scale index, so it replaces Bing for coverage but not for data collection. The terms name Google Ireland Limited as the provider in the EEA and Switzerland. Signed-in search history can be switched off in My Activity, and AI Overviews appear whenever Google's systems judge them helpful. Switch if coverage and familiarity matter more to you than avoiding another large ad-funded index. (United States)
• SearXNG (#15 of 16): Metasearch engine that queries many services without tracking its users. Watch out: the project names no legal entity or country, so nobody can be held to a service commitment.

When Microsoft Bing is still the right call: Staying with Bing is reasonable for someone who already lives in the Microsoft account and Edge, since Bing pays Microsoft Rewards of up to 5 points per search for signed-in users and the Edge pairing lists enhanced privacy features. It also suits anyone whose main need is a mainstream index with Safe Search settings and AI-generated answers, and who accepts the data use described in the privacy statement.

Read from the vendor’s own pages on 5 November 2026.

• learn.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/search-apis: Retirement of public Bing Search APIs on 11 August 2025
• learn.microsoft.com/en-us/bingwebmaster: Webmaster API data and legacy retirement note
• blogs.bing.com/webmaster/february-2026/Introducing-AI-Performance-in-Bing-Webmaster-Tools-Public-Preview: AI Performance report metrics and robots.txt statement
• blogs.bing.com/webmaster/october-2026/Introducing-Topics-Portfolio-Beta-in-AI-Performance: Topics Portfolio beta columns
• bing.com/indexnow: IndexNow description
• indexnow.org/documentation: Key and URL submission method
• learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/agents/how-to/tools/bing-grounding: Grounding with Bing Search rules, costs, compliance boundary
• privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement: Search history controls, retention and de-identified sharing

The same four questions are asked of every search engines product: time to value, real cost, the way out and the intended buyer. On those tests Microsoft Bing lands at place 11 of 16. The editorial process sets out how facts are gathered and how commercial links are handled.