Bing does not get much love in local SEO conversations, but it holds a real slice of the search market — particularly among desktop users, Windows device defaults, and older demographics. More relevant now: Bing powers the location results in Microsoft Copilot and the AI-integrated search experiences Microsoft has been aggressively rolling out. Ignoring Bing Places means leaving that traffic on the table for competitors who bothered to spend 30 minutes claiming their listing.

The Case for Bing Places

Bing’s US market share fluctuates but consistently sits in the 6-10% range for general search. For local queries on desktop, that number is arguably higher because Windows machines default to Bing in Edge and Cortana. In some industries — particularly B2B services, legal, financial, and healthcare — the Bing user demographic skews toward people who are more likely to convert. They are older, more likely to be using a work computer, and often have higher purchasing authority. It is not Google, but it is not nothing either.

The other argument: setup is fast. If you spend 30 minutes claiming your Bing Places listing, you are largely done. The ongoing maintenance is minimal. The ROI on that 30 minutes is disproportionately high compared to almost any other local SEO tactic, precisely because most businesses skip it and competition is low.

Claiming Your Bing Places Listing

Go to bingplaces.com and sign in with a Microsoft account. Bing will often import your Google Business Profile data if you connect your GBP account, which speeds up initial setup considerably. Otherwise, search for your business and either claim an existing auto-generated listing or create a new one. Verification is done by phone, SMS, or email depending on what Bing has on file for your business.

One practical option worth noting: if you have multiple locations, Bing allows bulk uploads via spreadsheet. For agencies managing several clients or businesses with multiple storefronts, this is a meaningful time-saver. The bulk upload template is straightforward — name, address, phone, URL, hours, categories — and it handles batches of dozens of locations at once.

Key Fields to Fill Out Completely

  • Business name: Your real business name, consistent with all other citations. No keyword additions or descriptive qualifiers that do not appear in your legal or operating name.
  • Address: Exact match to your Google Business Profile and website contact page. Suite numbers, abbreviations (St. vs. Street) — all of it needs to match.
  • Phone: Local number preferred. If you use call tracking numbers, be thoughtful — changing the phone number across citations creates inconsistency that degrades data trust across all platforms.
  • Categories: Bing’s category system is reasonable. Choose the most specific match, then add relevant secondary categories. More specific is generally better than more general.
  • Hours: Accurate, including holiday hours. Outdated hours erode trust and increase bounce rates from searchers who show up when you are closed.
  • Website: Link to the most relevant landing page, not just your homepage.
  • Photos: Upload a cover photo, logo, and several interior/exterior shots. Bing displays these in its local results.
  • Description: Write plainly about what you do and who you serve. Bing displays this text in local listings and in Copilot-generated responses.

The Google Business Profile Import

Bing’s GBP import feature is genuinely useful and reduces setup time considerably. It pulls your verified GBP data — name, address, phone, hours, categories, photos — directly into Bing Places. This does not mean you should set it and forget it. After importing, review every field to confirm accuracy. I have seen imports pull outdated phone numbers or old addresses that had since been corrected on Google but not in Bing’s data sources. Verify before you publish, and update manually if anything is off. The import is a starting point, not a finished product.

Bing Places and Microsoft Copilot

This is the angle that makes Bing Places more strategically important heading into the next few years. Microsoft has deeply integrated Bing’s local index into Copilot’s responses. When someone asks Copilot for a local business recommendation — ‘find a good accountant in Tempe’ or ‘best HVAC company near me’ — it draws from Bing’s local data. A claimed, verified, and optimized Bing Places listing gives your business a better shot at appearing in those AI-generated responses.

The exact ranking mechanics Copilot uses are not fully transparent, but completeness, verification status, and category accuracy clearly factor in. Businesses that treat Bing Places as a real asset — not an afterthought — are positioning themselves for the AI search surface in a way that most of their competitors are not.

Reviews on Bing

Bing aggregates reviews from multiple sources. It has historically displayed Yelp reviews and TripAdvisor data, and now pulls from other sources depending on category and geography. You cannot directly solicit Bing reviews the way you can with Google, but your review profile across other platforms flows into how Bing presents your business. If you have been actively building a review presence on Google and Yelp through consistent online review management, that work benefits your Bing presence too. The platforms are not as siloed as they appear.

Citations and NAP Consistency

Like Google, Bing uses third-party data aggregators to cross-reference business information. Inconsistent NAP data — different phone numbers, old addresses, name variations — creates noise in Bing’s data graph and can suppress your listing’s confidence score. Maintaining clean local citations across the major aggregators (Data Axle, Foursquare, Neustar Localeze) benefits Bing as well as Google and Apple. These aggregators feed all three platforms from the same data pools.

If your business has moved, changed phone numbers, or rebranded in the last few years, a citation audit is worth doing before you focus heavily on Bing Places optimization. Cleaning up the underlying data is more valuable than optimizing a listing that is fighting against conflicting information in the aggregators.

What Not to Obsess Over

Bing Places is not a primary channel for most local businesses, and it should not be treated as one. Set it up correctly, keep the information accurate, and revisit it when major details change (new address, new phone, holiday hours, business rebranding). It does not need weekly attention the way Google Business Profile does. The goal is a clean, verified, complete listing — not a complex ongoing optimization campaign.

Where I see businesses waste time: getting overly focused on Bing Places while neglecting their GBP, which drives 10x the traffic. The right approach is to spend the upfront hour getting Bing Places right, then focus your ongoing energy where the volume is.

Bing Places is one tile in a larger local presence strategy. If you want to see how it fits alongside the higher-leverage work, the local SEO services overview covers the full approach, including where I typically focus first for Phoenix-area businesses and what the realistic timeline looks like for meaningful visibility gains.