Bing Webmaster Tools Supporting Domain Connect To Ease Website Verification

Webmasters that want to to submit their site to Bing, or to get report or access diagnostic tools from it, they need to first verify their ownership in Bing Webmaster Tools.

Traditionally Bing Webmaster Tools only support three verification options, which include:

  1. XML file authentication.
  2. Meta tag authentication.
  3. Add a CNAME record to DNS.

The first two options, require webmasters to access their site's source code to complete the site verification process. On option 3, webmasters aren't required to access their site's source code, but need to access the domain hosting to edit the CNAME records to provide the necessary code provided by Bing Webmaster Tools.

Here, Bing is simplifying this third option, by announcing the support for Domain Connect.

This allows webmasters using 1&1 IONOS, GoDaddy, Media Temple or Plesk to easily verify their websites with Bing Webmaster Tools.

By supporting Domain Connect, the open standard that makes it easy for users to configure DNS for a domain running at a DNS provider to work with a Service running at an independent Service Provider, webmasters can verify their site without having to understand any of the complexities of DNS.

What webmasters need to do, is to just verify their site with Domain Connect.

To do this, they can sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools, to then enter the URL of their site into the 'Add a Site' input box and clicking 'Add'.

Bing Webmaster Tools - Domain Connect

After this, Bing Webmaster Tools will then automatically check to identify if that website is hosted on DNS provider that has integrated Domain Connect solution with Bing Webmaster Tools. If it is, webmasters will see this:

Bing Webmaster Tools - Domain Connect

Then webmasters need to just login to their DNS provider to verify.

IONOS, GoDaddy, Media Temple, Plesk - login form

After that, the website will be successfully verified by Bing Webmaster Tools within few seconds, or in certain cases, it may take longer as DNS provider needs to first send the site ownership signal to Bing Webmaster Tool service.

This simplicity should significantly reduce the time taken and simplify the site verification process in Bing Webmaster Tools.

Google has a similar feature in its Search Console, which automate the verification process, by partnering with domain name providers to make it easier. But Google does not work with Domain Connect, at least until this Bing's announcement.

With Bing having an advantage here, this should entice more webmasters in using Bing Webmaster Tool, as more webmasters would be able to verify their sites easier to this search engine. Successfully verifying a site will open more ways of reporting, more debugging options and more informed site owners.

This can also help Bing to index and rank the sites better, and give site owners more access to advanced search engine reporting.

Published: 
21/08/2019