Bing Places for Business: how to set it up and why it's worth 20 minutes

Most small businesses set up a Google Business Profile, then stop. Bing gets ignored because "nobody uses Bing". That was a reasonable shortcut ten years ago. It's a weaker one now.

Bing is the default search engine on Windows computers and in the Edge browser, which covers a lot of office desks. It also feeds Microsoft Copilot, and Bing's index is one of the sources several AI assistants draw on when they answer questions about local businesses. Your Bing Places listing is what those tools see when they look you up.

The good news is that it takes about twenty minutes if your Google profile is already in order.

What is Bing Places for Business?

It's Microsoft's free business listing tool, the Bing equivalent of a Google Business Profile. Your listing controls the name, address, phone number, hours, photos and website that appear in Bing search results and on Bing Maps, and Microsoft has said it plans to tie Bing Places more closely into Copilot as well.

Microsoft rebuilt Bing Places in October 2025. It now runs on bing.com, the dashboard is simpler, and the import from Google works much better than it used to. Existing listings carried over automatically, so if you set one up years ago it's still there.

The fast way: import from Google

If you already have a verified Google Business Profile, importing is the quickest route.

1. Go to Bing Places and sign in with a Microsoft account, or with the Google account that manages your Business Profile.
2. Choose the option to import from Google Business Profile and allow Bing to read your profile.
3. Pick the locations you want to bring across. Bing shows an import summary that flags anything it couldn't map cleanly, such as a category with no exact Bing match.
4. Fix anything the summary flags, then publish.

Listings imported from a verified Google profile are often verified straight away or within a day or two. If yours isn't, Bing falls back to its other methods.

The manual way

If you'd rather not connect your Google account, or you don't have a Google profile, add the business by hand. Search for it first, because Bing may already have an unclaimed listing built from public data. Claim that one rather than creating a duplicate.

Bing shows the verification options available for your listing. They usually include a phone call to the business number, an email, or a postcard with a PIN mailed to the business address. The postcard is the slow one, so pick phone or email if you can.

What to fill in

Treat it like your Google profile and copy the details exactly. The name should match your signs and registration, and the phone number should be the one you actually answer. Write the address exactly as it appears elsewhere, or hide it and set a service area if customers don't come to you. Add your website, regular and holiday hours, and the most specific category you can find.

Then add a description written for people, a logo, a cover photo and a handful of real photos. Microsoft's new recommendation tool points out fields that are missing or thin, and it's worth working through its list once.

Bing Webmaster Tools: the other half

Bing Places handles your business listing. Bing Webmaster Tools handles your website. It's a separate free account where you submit your sitemap, see which pages Bing has indexed and spot crawl errors. You can import your site from Google Search Console in a couple of clicks.

Webmaster Tools also supports IndexNow, a simple way to tell Bing (and other search engines that support it) the moment you publish or change a page, instead of waiting for a crawler to notice. Many website platforms and SEO plugins can send IndexNow pings automatically.

How Bing ranks local results

Much like Google: relevance (does your listing match the search), distance, and prominence, which includes reviews from around the web and how often your business is mentioned. Bing pulls in reviews from a range of sites rather than only its own, so a healthy review profile on Google and industry directories helps here too.

Consistency matters as much as anything. If Bing, Google, Apple and your website all show the same name, number and hours, every system that reads them, from Maps apps to AI assistants, can describe you with confidence.

A ten-minute quarterly check

• Confirm hours, phone and website are still right.
• Add holiday hours for the coming months.
• Look for a duplicate listing created from old data, and report it.
• Do the same check on Google and Apple Business.

If keeping three or four listings in sync isn't how you want to spend your time, we manage them as part of our Google Business Profile management service, Bing and Apple included.