Is Bing Places for Business free?

Yes. Creating, claiming and managing a Bing Places for Business listing is free. You only need a Microsoft, Google or work account to sign in, and there is no charge to appear in Bing Maps or Bing's local results.

Can I import my Google Business Profile into Bing Places?

Yes. Bing Places lets you sign in with the Google account that manages your Google Business Profile and import your listing details. Microsoft improved this import flow when it relaunched Bing Places in October 2025. Always review the imported details before you publish, because formatting errors carry straight across.

How long does Bing Places verification take?

It depends on the method. Listings imported from a verified Google Business Profile are often verified quickly, while phone or email verification is usually same day. Postcard verification takes longer because a PIN has to arrive in the mail. If a listing stays unverified for more than a couple of weeks, contact Bing Places support.

Does Bing Places help me show up in Microsoft Copilot?

It helps. Microsoft's documentation says Copilot can fetch information from the Bing search service to ground its answers, so a complete, accurate Bing presence is part of being visible when people ask Copilot for a local business. Your website also needs to be crawlable by Bingbot and indexed in Bing.

Do I need Bing Places if I already rank well on Google?

Yes, it is worth the hour it takes. Bing has a smaller audience than Google, but it is the default search engine in Microsoft Edge and Windows, it is used heavily on work computers, and it feeds Microsoft's AI tools. Most of your competitors have never claimed their listing, so the visibility is cheap to win.

Bing Places for Business Setup, Step by Step

Bing Places for Business is Microsoft’s free tool for putting your business on Bing Maps, Bing’s local results and the AI answers that draw on Bing. Setting it up takes about an hour if you import from Google Business Profile, and the main job for an Australian business is getting the address, phone and category details exactly right before you publish.

Most Bing Places guides are written for the United States, so they skip the details that trip up Australian listings: unit and level formatting, 1300 numbers, service-area businesses and suburb names that Bing does not recognise. This guide walks through the full setup, the checks we run before a listing goes live, and the fixes for the problems we see most often.

What is Bing Places for Business?

Bing Places for Business is the dashboard where you claim and manage your business details on Bing. Microsoft’s own help page describes it as the place to claim or update your listing if you want to add or change how your business appears in Bing Maps search results.

Your listing can show up in three places:

Bing Maps, including directions and the map panel.
Bing search results, as a local pack or a business panel beside the results.
Microsoft’s AI experiences, including Copilot, which can use Bing search to ground its answers.

Microsoft relaunched Bing Places in October 2025. The business dashboard moved from bingplaces.com to bing.com/forbusiness, existing listings were migrated automatically, and the Google import flow was rebuilt. If you set up a listing years ago and have not logged in since, it is worth checking that your details survived the move.

Is Bing worth bothering with in Australia?

Yes, for most local businesses. Google dominates Australian search, and StatCounter’s Australian search engine data puts Bing well behind it overall. But Bing’s share is noticeably higher on desktop than on mobile, and that matters for who is searching.

Bing is the default search engine in Microsoft Edge and is built into Windows. Plenty of people search from a work computer without ever changing that default. For B2B services, accountants, lawyers, commercial cleaners and trades that win office fit-out work, a large slice of enquiries comes from exactly those desktop searchers.

There are three practical reasons to claim your listing:

Low competition. Many Australian businesses have never claimed their Bing listing. A complete, verified profile can stand out in a way that would take months to achieve on Google.
AI visibility. Microsoft’s documentation says Copilot may fetch information from the Bing search service when web information helps it give a grounded answer. If someone asks Copilot for “a plumber in Parramatta open on Saturday”, Bing’s data is in the mix.
Data accuracy. Bing creates listings from public data whether you claim them or not. An unclaimed listing can carry an old phone number or a closed location, and you cannot fix it without claiming it.

Treat Bing Places as part of your wider local SEO foundation, not a replacement for Google Business Profile. The two work best when their details match exactly.

Before you start: get your details consistent

The fastest way to a clean Bing listing is to decide on one canonical version of your business details first, then use it everywhere. Search engines cross-check your name, address and phone number (often called NAP) against your website and directories. Small differences weaken that trust.

Write these down before you log in:

Detail	Australian rule of thumb
Business name	Your real trading name, exactly as on your signage. No suburbs or keywords added.
Address	One consistent format, for example “Level 3, 100 Example St, Sydney NSW 2000”.
Phone	The local number customers call. Use the same format on your website.
Website	The exact page you want traffic to land on, with the right https and www version.
Hours	Including public holiday hours if you close for them.

Australian address and phone gotchas

These are the issues we fix most often on Australian listings:

Unit and level formats. “3/12 Smith St”, “Unit 3, 12 Smith St” and “Suite 3, 12 Smith St” can be treated as different addresses. Pick the one Australia Post uses for you and stick to it.
Suburb versus city. A business in Surry Hills should list Surry Hills, not Sydney. Using the wrong locality is one of the main reasons a pin lands in the wrong place.
State abbreviations. Use NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, ACT and NT consistently. Mixing “Victoria” and “VIC” across directories creates needless variation.
1300 and 13 numbers. These are fine as a primary number if that is what customers call, but a local landline or mobile is a stronger local signal. If you use a 1300 number on your site, use the same one on Bing.
Shopping centre addresses. If you trade from a centre, include the shop number. Without it, Bing may merge you with the centre’s own listing.

If your details are already inconsistent across the web, fix the big directories first. Our guide to local citations explains which ones matter in Australia.

How do you set up Bing Places for Business, step by step?

There are two routes. Importing from Google is quicker and usually the right choice. Manual setup is for businesses without a Google Business Profile, or when the Google listing itself has problems you do not want to copy.

Option 1: Import from Google Business Profile

Go to bing.com/forbusiness and sign in with a Microsoft, Google or work account.
Choose the option to import from Google Business Profile.
Sign in with the Google account that manages your profile and grant Bing permission to read it.
Select the location or locations you want to import.
Review the import summary. Bing flags any fields it could not map cleanly.
Check every field against your canonical details from the table above before you publish.

Imported listings from a verified Google profile are often verified quickly, but do not assume it. Check the listing status in your dashboard after a day or two.

One caution: the import copies your Google details as they are. If your Google profile has an old phone number, a keyword-stuffed name or the wrong category, those problems come straight across. Clean up Google first. Our Google Business Profile page covers what a clean profile looks like.

Option 2: Claim or create a listing manually

Sign in at bing.com/forbusiness and search for your business name and suburb.
If your business appears, choose to claim it. If it does not, add a new business.
Enter your name, address, phone and website exactly as you wrote them down.
Choose your categories (more on this below).
Add your hours, photos and a short description.
Choose a verification method and complete it.

Verification options vary by business, but usually include a phone call or text with a code, email, or a postcard with a PIN mailed to your address. Phone and email are fastest. A postcard to an Australian address can take a while, so make sure someone checks the mail.

How to optimise your Bing listing once it is live

Getting listed is the first step. These are the fields that make the listing actually useful.

Choose categories carefully

Pick the most specific primary category that describes what you do, not what you wish you ranked for. A dental clinic should choose a dentist category, not a broad “health” one. Add secondary categories only for services you genuinely offer. Bing’s category list is not identical to Google’s, so expect to choose the closest match rather than an exact copy.

Add real photos

Upload your logo, a cover image, your shopfront or signage, your team and your work. Real photos help customers recognise you and confirm that the business is genuine. Avoid stock images, which add nothing.

Write a plain, useful description

Describe what you do, who you do it for and where, in a few short sentences. Mention the suburbs you serve if that is natural. Do not stuff it with keywords, and do not paste in your Google description word for word if it was written mainly for Google.

Use the recommendations panel

The relaunched dashboard includes a recommendation tool that suggests missing or weak fields. Work through it, but apply judgement. A suggestion to add a field is only useful if you have accurate information to put in it.

Keep it in sync

When your hours, phone number or address change, update Google and Bing on the same day. Some businesses assume Bing will keep pulling from Google automatically after the first import. Check the sync settings in your dashboard rather than relying on that.

Service-area businesses: what if you have no shopfront?

Many Australian tradies, cleaners and mobile services work from home and travel to customers. You can still be on Bing, but handle the address carefully:

Do not invent an address. Virtual offices and borrowed addresses risk suspension on both Google and Bing, and they confuse customers.
Hide your home address if you do not serve customers there. Use the dashboard’s address visibility setting if it is offered for your listing, so the listing shows your service area rather than your street.
Back it up on your website. A clear service-area page listing the suburbs you cover gives Bing and Google a consistent signal about where you work.

Common Bing Places problems and how to fix them

Problem	Likely cause	Fix
Duplicate listings	Old data, a past move or a merged import	Claim each duplicate, then mark the extra ones as duplicates or closed in the dashboard
Pin in the wrong place	Wrong suburb or unit format	Correct the address, then adjust the pin manually
Import fails	Google profile not verified, or permission not granted	Verify the Google profile first, retry, then contact Bing Places support
Listing shows old details	Unclaimed listing built from public data	Claim it and update every field
Changes not showing	Edits still processing	Wait a few days, then check again before re-submitting

If something is stuck, use the support option inside the Bing Places dashboard and include your listing ID and screenshots.

Worked example: a Parramatta plumber goes from unclaimed to complete

Here is how we would set up a typical listing. This is an illustrative example, not a client result.

A plumbing business in Parramatta has a verified Google Business Profile but has never touched Bing. A search on Bing Maps shows an unclaimed listing with an old mobile number and the suburb listed as “Sydney”.

Fix Google first. The Google profile name includes “Emergency Plumber Parramatta 24/7”. That is trimmed back to the real trading name.
Set the canonical details. The address becomes “Unit 4, 22 Example Rd, Parramatta NSW 2150” everywhere, and the business decides the local landline is its primary number.
Import from Google. The import pulls in the clean details. The summary flags that the old Bing listing exists, so it is claimed rather than duplicated.
Check the categories. The import maps to a plumbing category. Secondary categories are added only for services the business actually performs.
Add photos and hours. Van, team and recent jobs go up, plus Saturday hours and public holiday closures.
Connect the website. The site is verified in Bing Webmaster Tools, a sitemap is submitted, and the service page for Parramatta is linked from the listing.

The whole job takes about an hour, and the business now has a matching, verified presence across Google, Bing and the AI tools that draw on Bing.

Do not stop at the listing: set up Bing Webmaster Tools

Your Bing Places listing tells Bing about your business. Bing Webmaster Tools tells Bing about your website. Many Australian sites only ever set up Google Search Console and have indexing gaps in Bing that nobody has noticed.

In Bing Webmaster Tools:

Verify your site and submit your XML sitemap.
Check that your key service and location pages are indexed.
Consider IndexNow, which lets you notify Bing as soon as a page is added or updated instead of waiting for a recrawl.

Then check that Bingbot can actually crawl your site. A robots.txt rule or firewall setting that blocks Bingbot also takes you out of Copilot’s web answers. Our free Copilot crawler checker tests Bingbot access in seconds, and the AI crawler checker checks the other major AI crawlers too.

For the website side of being understood by search engines and AI tools, our guide to schema markup for Australian local businesses is the natural next step.

A Bing Places checklist for Australian businesses

Run through this before you call the job done:

Where Bing Places fits in your local strategy

Bing Places will not replace Google as your main source of local leads. It is a cheap, durable layer of extra visibility, and a growing input into AI answers, that most competitors leave untouched. Combined with a strong Google profile, consistent citations and good reviews, it makes your business easier to find wherever customers search.

That combination is what drives real results. When we combined local SEO and Google Ads for Isa Smiles Dental, phone calls rose 220%. If you also want to know why your Google listing is not performing, read why your Google Business Profile isn’t ranking.

If you would rather have it done properly the first time, our Bing Places setup and optimisation service handles the import, verification, categories and ongoing consistency with Google. Book a free strategy call and we will check your current Bing listing as part of it.

Sources

Microsoft Bing Blog, Introducing the New Bing Places for Business (October 2025)
Microsoft Support, Add and manage your business listing
Microsoft Learn, Manage public web access in Microsoft 365 Copilot
Search Engine Land, New Bing Places for Business is live
StatCounter, Search engine market share in Australia

Bing Places for Business: An Australian Setup Guide