bingbot Series: Easy set-up guide for Bing’s Adaptive URL submission API

In February, we announced launch of adaptive URL submission capability. As called out during the launch, as SEO manager or website owner, you do not need to wait for the crawler to discover new links, you should just submit those links automatically to Bing to get your content immediately indexed as soon as your content is published!  Who in SEO didn’t dream of that. 

In the last few months we have seen rapid adoption of this capability with thousands of websites submitting millions of URLs and getting them indexed on Bing instantly.  

At the same time, we have few webmasters who have asked for guidance on integrating the adaptive URL submission API. This blog provides information on how easy it is to set-up the adaptive URL submission API.  

Step 1: Generate an API Key  

Webmasters need an API key to be able to access and use Bing Webmaster APIs. This API key can be generated from Bing Webmaster Tools by following these steps:  

1. Sign in to your account on Bing Webmaster Tools. In case you do not already have a Bing Webmaster account, sign up today using any Microsoft, Google or Facebook ID. 

2. Add & verify the site that you want to submit URL for through the API, if not already done. 

3. Select and open any verified site through the My Sites page on Bing Webmaster Tools and click on Webmaster API on the left-hand side navigation menu. 

4. If you are generating the API key for the first time, please click Generate to create an API Key.  

Else you will see the key previously generated. 
Note: Only one API key can be generated per user. You can change your API key anytime; change is taken by the system within 30 minutes.

Step 2: Integrate with your website 

You can any of the below protocols to easily integrate the Submit URL API into your system.  

• JSON request sample 

  POST /webmaster/api.svc/json/SubmitUrl?
  apikey=sampleapikeyEDECC1EA4AE341CC8B6 HTTP/1.1
  Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
  Host: ssl.bing.com
  
  {
  "siteUrl":"http://example.com",
  "url":"http://example.com/url1.html"
  } 

• XML Request sample 

  POST /webmaster/api.svc/pox/SubmitUrl?apikey=sampleapikey341CC57365E075EBC8B6 HTTP/1.1 
  Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8 
  Host: ssl.bing.com  
  
  <SubmitUrl xmlns="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Microsoft.Bing.Webmaster.Api">
  <siteUrl>http://example.com</siteUrl> 
  <url>http://example.com/url1.html</url> 
  </SubmitUrl> 

If the URL submission is successful you will receive an http 200 response. This ensures that your pages will be discovered for indexing and if Bing webmaster guidelines are met then the pages will be crawled and indexed in real time.

Using any of the above methods you should be able to directly and automatically let Bing know whenever new links are created in your website. We encourage you to integrate such solution in your Web Content Management System to let Bing auto discover your new content at publication time. 

In case you face any challenges during the integration, you can reach out bwtsupport@microsoft.com to raise a service ticket. Feel free to contact us if your web site requires more than 10,000 URLs submitted per day. We will adjust as needed. 

Thanks! 
Bing Webmaster Tools team