Microsoft Bing will no longer accept XML sitemaps that were submitted anonymously through HTTP requests, Fabrice Canel from Microsoft Bing announced today. The reason Bing will no longer allow anonymous sitemap submission is due to abuse by search spammers.

How anonymous sitemap submission worked. Microsoft explained that since the inception of XML sitemaps with Bing, Bing allowed for anonymous submission through using a HTTP request, such as http://www.bing.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com/sitemap.xml.

No longer supported. Microsoft is doing away with HTTP request anonymous submission of Sitemaps starting today, May 13, 2022. Fabrice Canel wrote that Microsoft Bing is “deprecating the ability for anonymous sitemap submissions starting today.”

Why is it going away. SEO and search spammers have been abusing the anonymous submission of Sitemaps and thus, Microsoft is no longer going to support it. Fabrice Canel wrote “recent evaluations have shown that it was often subject to misuse by spammers.”

How to submit a sitemap to Bing. You can still submit your sitemaps using robots.txt on your domain name and/or through Bing Webmaster tools.

• robots.txt: Add a reference to your sitemap in the robots.txt file located at the root of the host to inform all search engines. Example: Sitemap: http://www.example.org/sitemap.xml

• Bing webmaster tools: Alternatively, you can submit your sitemaps in Bing Webmaster tools https://www.bing.com/webmasters/sitemaps

Don’t forget IndexNow. Microsoft Bing of course would still love for you to push content to them using IndexNow, so you have that as an additional and supplemental option.

Why we care. If you have been using the anonymous XML sitemap option for your site through HTTP requests, you should be aware that will stop working sometime today. Switch over to using robots.txt or Bing Webmaster Tools for submitting your sitemap going forward.