Ask most publishers which search engine they optimize for and the answer is Google, without much hesitation. That instinct is defensible — Google handles the large majority of search traffic in most markets — but it also creates a blind spot. Bing is not a rounding error. It powers a meaningful share of desktop search, feeds results into other surfaces, and represents an audience that a Google-only indexing strategy simply never reaches. Instant Indexing inside AutoSchedulePost’s Publishing Add-ons is built to cover both, submitting new pages to Google Search Console and Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster Tools rather than treating one as the whole job. Here’s what each side actually involves and why skipping either one leaves something on the table.
Two Different Tools, One Shared Purpose
Both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools exist to do roughly the same two things for their respective search engines: let you tell the engine about new or updated pages so they get found faster, and let the engine tell you things back — how your pages are appearing in search, what’s being indexed, and where there might be problems. The purpose overlaps almost completely. What differs is adoption, familiarity, and how much attention each one typically gets from the average publisher.
Google Search Console is the side most people already have some relationship with. It’s the default because Google is the default search engine for most workflows, and most SEO advice, tooling, and habit-forming content assumes Google Search Console as a baseline. Bing Webmaster Tools does the equivalent job for Bing, but far fewer publishers have it connected, fewer still check it regularly, and it rarely gets mentioned in the same breath as its Google counterpart — not because it’s less capable, but because it’s less habitual.
What Submission Looks Like on Each Side
On the Google side, submitting a newly published page for indexing runs through Search Console’s existing submission channel — the same connection most publishers already use for monitoring, extended here to also actively request indexing at or near publish time rather than waiting for organic crawling. Because this integration already existed as part of Search Console monitoring, extending it to cover submission was a relatively natural next step.
The Bing side works differently in one important respect: it isn’t something most publishing tools have wired up in the first place, because Bing Webmaster Tools’ submission API sees a fraction of the integration attention that Google’s tools get. Building that connection means a dedicated submission path specifically for Bing, separate from whatever exists for Google, using Bing’s own API rather than assuming Google’s mechanics apply. That’s also exactly why it’s easy for a publishing pipeline to quietly cover Google alone and call the job done — Bing takes deliberate, separate work to include, and it’s the kind of thing that gets skipped precisely because it’s invisible until you go looking for it.
Why Bing Is Worth the Extra Step
The case for treating Bing as an afterthought usually rests on its smaller share of overall search volume compared to Google. That’s true, but it undersells a few things. Bing’s search volume, while smaller, still represents millions of real searches — traffic that a Google-only indexing strategy structurally cannot capture, no matter how well-optimized your Google presence is, because indexing on one engine has no bearing on indexing on another. They’re separate systems with separate crawlers and separate indexes; being found quickly on Google says nothing about whether or how quickly you’ll be found on Bing.
Bing also feeds into search experiences beyond its own standalone search engine — its index underlies other products and integrations in the Microsoft ecosystem, which means Bing’s index reach is broader than a simple market-share number for “people who typed bing.com” would suggest. For a content operation publishing at real volume, deliberately leaving one of the two major indexing pipelines unconnected is an avoidable gap, not a considered trade-off — it’s usually just what happens by default when nobody built the second connection.
What Changes When You Cover Both
Practically, covering both engines through Instant Indexing means every newly published page gets submitted twice, through two different systems, at or near publish time — rather than assuming that being indexed on Google implies anything about Bing, or vice versa. For a scheduling tool publishing consistently across many posts, that doubled submission compounds: every single page gets the benefit of faster discovery on both indexes, instead of half your indexing story being left to whatever organic crawling Bing eventually gets around to.
It also means the return channel works both ways. Google Search Console reports impressions and search-presence data back for pages indexed on Google; Bing Webmaster Tools does the analogous thing for its own index. Treating both as sources of insight — not just submission targets — gives a fuller picture of how your content is actually performing across search, rather than a Google-shaped picture with a Bing-shaped hole in it. We go deeper on using that returning data productively in Search Console Insights: Turning Impressions Data Into Content Ideas and How to Read Webmaster Tools Data as Content Insight, Not Just Diagnostics.
The Practical Argument for Not Choosing
There’s a version of this conversation that frames it as a choice — pick the engine that matters more and focus your effort there. For most publishers, that framing is a false economy. The cost of also submitting to Bing, once the mechanism exists, is close to zero incremental effort on your end; the work is in building and maintaining the connection, not in some ongoing decision you have to keep making per post. Once Instant Indexing is submitting to both engines automatically as part of your normal publishing flow, there’s no scenario where covering Google alone was the better call. The only reason to skip Bing is that nobody built the pipe for it — which is precisely the gap this feature closes.
Where This Fits
Indexing submission on both engines is one part of the larger publishing and site-health picture — see Instant Indexing 101: Getting New Posts Into Search Faster for the mechanics of submission itself, and Publishing Add-ons Overview: Instant Indexing and Autopilot for how this sits alongside the broader improvement layer that runs on top of your published content. If you’re publishing at real volume, Instant Indexing for High-Velocity Publishing Schedules covers why the compounding effect of dual-engine submission matters even more the faster you publish. The short version of all of it: Google gets the attention by default, Bing gets skipped by default, and the fix is simply making sure your indexing strategy doesn’t quietly inherit that same default.
