Connect your site to Bing Webmaster Tools

RavanH

Both for Bing Webmaster Tools reports on your sitemap status and for manual or automatic Sitemap Notification, a connection between your site and the Bing Webmaster Tools API needs to be created. This is a one-time setup that should remain active as long as the generated API key is not deleted from your Bing Webmaster Tools account. Only if you or a security plugin has changed WordPress Salts, you will need to reconfigure.

What’s needed?

Assuming you have your WordPress site and the XML Sitemaps & Google News free plugin installed and activated, there are a few more prerequisites to address:

  1. You need an account on Bing Webmaster Tools. In case you do not already have a Bing Webmaster account, sign up using any Microsoft, Google or Facebook ID.
  2. Your site property needs to be set up in Bing Webmaster Tools. If you have not already done that, follow the instructions on https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/add-and-verify-site-12184f8b.

The connection between your site and Bing Webmaster Tools will be created in 2 stages.

Stage I. Create an API key

An API key1 can be generated from Bing Webmaster Tools by following the steps below:

  1. Sign in to your account on Bing Webmaster Tools.
  2. Click on Settings button on top right corner and then go to API Access section.
  3. If you are using API Access for the first time, please read and accept the Terms and Conditions displayed and then click on API Key. 
  4. Click on Generate API Key to create an API Key. Only one API key can be generated per user.
    Generate API key
  5. Click Copy to copy the API key and paste it in the API Key field in your WordPress Bing Webmaster Tools Connection admin page.
  6. Hit Save Changes in WordPress to finish stage 1.

Lost or compromised API key

 ⚠ Warning
Do not give out your API key to any 3rd party or anyone you do not trust.

If you feel that your API key has been compromised or is being used by an unauthorized party, you can create a new key after deleting your current one. Please go to Webmaster API page in Bing Webmaster Tools and click on Delete. Then, click on Generate to create a new API key. Note that on deleting your old API key, all applications tied to that key will no longer function and will have to be updated with the new API key.

Stage II. Test and activate the connection

After saving the API key in the previous stage, the connection will be tested for you. If an error is encountered, you will see this on the next page load. If the connection test is successful, you will see a short message:

The connection test was successful and the connection was activated!

You will be automatically redirected back to the plugin settings page.

Possible errors

Either the API key does not match your Bing Webmaster Tools account, your account has insufficient rights or your site property has not been set up and verified in Bing Webmaster Tools.

Verify if your site has been configured in Bing Webmaster Tools. If not, please do so as instructed on https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/add-and-verify-site-12184f8b.

Then check your user access level to the site property under User management. Your Role should have Owner or Read-Write level.

If that did not solve the issue, you’ll need to reconfigure the plugin connection. Use the button Disconnect to start fresh.

The API key value that was entered does not seem to be a valid API Key value. You’ll need to reconfigure the plugin connection. Use the button Disconnect to start fresh and carefully copy/paste the API Key again.

This usually means that the connected Microsoft account has insufficient rights. Make sure to connect with an account that has at least Read-Write access to the site property in Bing Webmaster Tools.

This usually means the site property URL used in the API call was not found or does not match the property verified in Webmaster Tools.

  1. The API key is generated for a user and not a site and hence a user can use the same API key for all their verified sites on Bing Webmaster Tools. ↩︎