Bing is shuttering its public URL submission tool, which allowed people to anonymously submit URLs to Bing’s index.
Going forward, submitting URLs to Bing’s index will have to be done through Bing Webmaster Tools.
Previously, Bing’s public URL submission tool allowed anyone to submit web pages whether they were signed in or not.
Bing says this change is being made to improve quality control of the pages being submitted.
“Why say goodbye? Well, the URLs received are by far too low quality to be trustable, and webmasters preferring having more ownership of the URLs for their site.”
Site owners now have to log in and verify their site in Bing Webmaster Tools before being able to submit URLs.
Bing Webmaster Tools supports Google and Facebook authentication, as well as existing Microsoft accounts, which makes the login process a simple one.
Once a site has been added to Bing Webmaster Tools and verified, the URL submission tool can be found within the ‘Configure My Site’ menu options.
It’s not unusual for Bing to retire its public URL submission tool. In fact, this change should have been expected sooner or later.
Google retired its public URL submission tool back in July, and now only accepts URL submissions through Search Console.
Unlike Bing, Google did not specifically say why it removed its public tool, but it probably did so for similar reasons.
With this change site owners can now only submit URLs belonging to sites they have verified ownership of.
That may be concerning to some people, as there are legitimate reasons for wanting to submit URLs belonging to other sites.
On the other hand, Bing has to appease the site owners who say they want more control over their own URLs.
