Bing Places in 15 Minutes — Most Aussies Never Bother
Around 4% of Australian web searches happen on Bing — that sounds dismissible until you do the maths. With roughly 25 million internet users, that is more than 900,000 Bing searches in Australia every single day. More importantly, those Bing Places listings now feed Microsoft Copilot, the AI assistant built into every Windows 11 machine and Edge browser. If your business has not claimed its listing, you are invisible to an entire ecosystem — not just a search engine with a small slice of the market.
What Is Bing Places for Business?
Bing Places for Business is Microsoft's free local business listing platform — the structural equivalent of Google Business Profile, but for Bing and its extended ecosystem. When someone searches "plumber near me" or "best café in Parramatta" on Bing, the local map pack results are drawn directly from Bing Places data.
Unlike Google Business Profile, Bing Places is largely unclaimed by Australian businesses. Industry data suggests fewer than 30% of Australian SMBs have set up a Bing listing — meaning the Bing map pack for almost any local category is sparsely populated, and competition for top spots is minimal.
Your Bing Places listing feeds data to:
- Bing.com local search results — the map pack and knowledge panel
- Microsoft Copilot — the AI assistant integrated into Windows 11, Edge, and Microsoft 365
- Bing Maps — used natively in Windows and in some vehicle navigation systems
- Amazon Alexa — Alexa has used Bing as a data source for local business queries
- Yahoo Search — powered by Bing's index in many markets
- DuckDuckGo local results — DuckDuckGo uses Bing's index for non-personalised local results
Claiming your Bing Places listing means you are not just appearing on one search engine. You are feeding a data layer that Microsoft is embedding into every Windows computer, every Edge browser, and every Copilot query.
Why Bing Still Matters in Australia in 2026
StatCounter data for 2025 puts Bing at approximately 4% of Australian desktop search. Small — but not trivial. More relevant is the demographic: Bing over-indexes among corporate Windows users and Australians aged 35 and older who have not changed their browser default settings. For a tradie, dentist, or financial planner whose typical client is a homeowner aged 40 to 65, that 4% represents a meaningful slice of an actual buying audience.
| Search Engine | Australian Market Share (2025) | Est. Daily Searches (AU) |
|---|---|---|
| ~94% | ~22 million | |
| Bing | ~4% | ~940,000 |
| DuckDuckGo | ~0.9% | ~211,000 |
| Yahoo | ~0.6% | ~141,000 |
| Other | ~0.5% | ~118,000 |
The bigger trend is Microsoft Copilot. Copilot is embedded in Windows 11 (the default operating system on every new Windows PC), Microsoft Edge (the default browser on all Windows machines), and Microsoft 365 (used by millions of Australian businesses for Outlook, Teams, and Word). When someone asks Copilot "recommend a good mechanic in Campbelltown", it generates its response using structured local business data from Bing Places. If your listing does not exist or has incomplete hours, Copilot either omits you or surfaces wrong information — and the user never even opened a browser.
There is also the international visitor angle. Bing holds approximately 8% search share in both the United States and United Kingdom. For businesses in tourist precincts — near Sydney Harbour, the Gold Coast, the Yarra Valley — inbound travellers from English-speaking markets are meaningfully more likely to use Bing than the 4% Australian average suggests. A tour operator or waterfront restaurant that claims its Bing listing may capture international bookings that competitors are missing entirely.
Bing Places vs Google Business Profile: Side by Side
The two platforms are structurally similar but serve different audiences, have different levels of competition, and require different levels of ongoing attention.
| Feature | Google Business Profile | Bing Places for Business |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | Free |
| Verification method | Postcard, phone, email, video | Phone, email, or import from Google |
| Map pack competition (Australia) | Highly competitive in most categories | Low — most listings unclaimed |
| Review integration | Google Reviews (weighted heavily in ranking) | Surfaces TripAdvisor and Facebook reviews |
| AI integration | Google AI Overviews / Google SGE | Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11, Edge, M365) |
| Import from competitor | No direct import option | Yes — imports directly from Google Business Profile |
| Posting and updates | Google Posts, Q&A, product listings | Basic — no native post feature |
| Analytics depth | Detailed (impressions, calls, direction requests) | Basic (clicks and impressions) |
| Setup time | 20–40 minutes | 10–15 minutes (5 minutes via Google import) |
The key practical difference: for most categories in Australian cities, Bing's local map pack is dramatically less contested than Google's. A plumber in Sydney competing for a top-three Google map pack position faces hundreds of optimised competitors, each with years of reviews and citations. The same search on Bing may return only one or two claimed listings — making a top-three Bing position almost automatic for anyone who bothers to set up a listing today.
How to Set Up Bing Places for Business: Step-by-Step
The entire setup process takes 10 to 20 minutes for manual entry, or approximately 5 minutes if you use the Google Business Profile import. Here is the complete walkthrough.
Step 1: Create or Log In to a Microsoft Account
Navigate to bingplaces.com. You need a Microsoft account to proceed. Any existing Outlook, Hotmail, Xbox, or Microsoft 365 work account qualifies. If you do not have one, visit account.microsoft.com — creating an account is free and takes two minutes using any existing email address.
Step 2: Search for Your Existing Business
Before creating a new listing, search for your business name. Microsoft aggregates business data from web crawls and data brokers — it is common for a business to already have an unclaimed Bing listing with partial information. If Bing finds your business:
- Select your listing from the results
- Click "Claim this business"
- Proceed to verification
Always claim an existing listing rather than creating a duplicate. Two listings for the same business confuse the algorithm and can result in both being suppressed.
Step 3: Import from Google Business Profile (Fastest Option)
If you have a verified Google Business Profile, use the import function — it saves all manual data entry. From the Bing Places portal:
- Click "Import from Google" on the main setup screen
- Sign in to the Google account that manages your GBP when prompted
- Select which Google Business Profile location to import
- Review the imported data — name, address, phone, hours, categories, description, and photos all transfer
- Click Submit
You still need to complete verification, but you skip all manual data entry. Total time: approximately 5 minutes.
Step 4: Enter Your Business Details Manually
If you are not importing from Google, complete each field carefully:
- Business name: Use your exact trading name. Do not add keywords ("Smith's Plumbing | 24hr Emergency Plumber Sydney" violates Bing's guidelines and will be removed or suppressed).
- Address: Use the same format as your website and Google Business Profile. Consistency across platforms is a local SEO citation signal.
- Phone number: Use the Australian standard format — area code then number, with a space (02 9XXX XXXX or 03 9XXX XXXX). Inconsistent formatting across directories creates conflicting citation signals.
- Business category: Choose the most specific primary category available. Bing's taxonomy is less granular than Google's, but primary category selection directly affects which search queries trigger your listing.
- Hours of operation: Complete and accurate. Microsoft Copilot tells users whether you are currently open — if your hours are missing or wrong, Copilot may tell a ready-to-book customer that you are closed.
- Website URL: Link to your homepage, or a location-specific landing page if you operate multiple sites.
- Description: Write 150 to 250 words covering what you do, where you are located, and what makes your business distinctive. This text is indexed by Bing and used in AI-generated responses — include your suburb name and primary service category naturally within the copy.
Step 5: Upload Photos
Bing Places supports photos, and they meaningfully affect click-through rates in map results. Upload at minimum:
- A logo (displayed as your profile icon in search results)
- A cover image (exterior of premises, shopfront, or team in action)
- Three to five additional photos (interior, products, services being performed)
Name your image files descriptively before uploading — "electrician-penrith-team.jpg" rather than "IMG_3847.jpg". Bing indexes image filenames as contextual signals.
Step 6: Verify Your Listing
Bing offers two verification methods:
- Phone verification: Bing calls or texts your listed business number with a PIN. Fastest option — takes under two minutes if you have your phone available.
- Email verification: Bing sends a confirmation code to your listed business email address.
Once you enter the PIN, your listing enters a review queue and goes live within 24 to 48 hours.
Optimising Your Bing Places Listing After Setup
Claiming the listing is the floor, not the ceiling. These optimisations move a dormant listing to one that ranks consistently in the Bing map pack.
NAP Consistency Across All Platforms
NAP — Name, Address, Phone — is the data triple that local search algorithms use to confirm a business exists at a real address. Inconsistency across directories creates unreliability signals. If your website shows "St" and Bing Places shows "Street", or your business name includes "Pty Ltd" on your ABN registration but not on your listing, these discrepancies accumulate. Audit your NAP across your website footer, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Yellow Pages, True Local, and any industry directories you appear in — and standardise the format across all of them.
Write a Description That Includes Your Suburb
Bing's local ranking algorithm weighs textual relevance alongside physical proximity to the searcher. A description that mentions your suburb, services, and relevant descriptive terms improves your ranking for suburb-specific searches and "near me" queries. "We are a licensed electrician based in Penrith, servicing Western Sydney for residential and commercial electrical work since 2012" outperforms a generic "We provide electrical services" in both ranking and conversion.
Set Special Hours for Australian Public Holidays
Bing Places supports special hours. Configure them for the Australian public holiday calendar: Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day, Australia Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, ANZAC Day, and your relevant state-based holidays (e.g. Melbourne Cup Day in Victoria, Queensland's EKKA). A listing that shows your regular hours on Christmas Day when you are actually closed will frustrate customers who rely on Copilot or Bing Maps to plan their visit.
The Copilot Factor: The Real Reason to Care in 2026
The most compelling argument for Bing Places in 2026 is not the Bing search engine itself — it is Microsoft Copilot. Copilot is now embedded across:
- Windows 11 — the default operating system on every new Windows PC sold
- Microsoft Edge — the default browser on all Windows machines out of the box
- Microsoft 365 — Outlook, Teams, and Word used by millions of Australian businesses daily
- Bing.com — Copilot is the primary interface for users accessing Bing directly
When a user asks Copilot "find a hair salon near me open on Sunday in Chatswood", Copilot generates a structured recommendation using Bing Places data. No browser. No deliberate search. A ready-to-book customer gets a list of businesses — and if yours is not on it, they book somewhere else without ever knowing you existed.
For businesses like APX Trade Group, a licensed electrical contractor in Sydney, appearing in Copilot means showing up when someone types "find an electrician near me" directly into their Windows taskbar — a fundamentally different discovery channel from search engine results pages, with almost no competition from other local businesses because so few have claimed their Bing listing.
Unlike Google's AI Overviews — which remain contested among marketers and are still evolving — Copilot's local business integration is stable, ubiquitous on Windows hardware, and already driving queries. The adoption curve is built in: it is the default on the OS.
Is Bing Places Worth It for Australian Businesses? The Honest Answer
The short answer: yes, unconditionally — because it is free and takes 15 minutes. The longer answer depends on your business type and target customer demographic.
| Business Type | Bing Places Priority | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Tradies, contractors, service businesses | High | Homeowner clients aged 35+ and corporate property managers skew toward Windows and Bing; Copilot queries for emergency services are growing |
| Medical, dental, legal, financial | High | Professional clients on corporate Windows devices; older demographic over-indexes on Bing for trust-sensitive queries |
| Cafés, restaurants, hospitality | Medium-High | Tourist and corporate lunch queries hit Bing at above-average rates; Copilot integration with Teams means "find somewhere for lunch" queries are growing in business districts |
| Retail and beauty | Medium | Younger demographics skew Google, but Copilot is closing that gap; free setup means no reason to skip |
| E-commerce only (no physical location) | Low | Bing Places is a local business tool built around physical addresses; without a premises, benefits are minimal |
The hidden upside that rarely gets discussed: because so few Australian businesses have claimed their Bing Places listings, the map pack for almost any category in any Australian city is sparsely populated. A café in Melbourne's CBD that claims and optimises its listing today may hold a top-three position by default for months — possibly years — before competitors notice. In Google's map pack, that same position requires months of sustained optimisation against hundreds of established, well-reviewed competitors. Bing Places is the local SEO equivalent of cheap waterfront land before anyone else has built there.
Common Mistakes Australian Businesses Make with Bing Places
Setting It Up Once and Never Returning
The most common mistake is treating Bing Places as a one-time task. Like any listing, it requires maintenance: hours need updating for public holidays, photos age, and your categories may need adjusting as Bing expands its taxonomy. Check your listing at minimum once per quarter, and immediately after any change to your trading hours, address, or phone number.
Adding Keywords to the Business Name
Your Bing Places business name must match your real-world trading name exactly. Adding descriptive keywords — "Smith's Plumbing — Sydney's Best Emergency Plumber" — violates Bing's guidelines. Businesses that do this risk having their listing suspended or downranked algorithmically. Your categories, description, and photos carry the keyword signals; the business name field is not a ranking shortcut.
Inconsistent Phone Number Formatting
If your website shows "02 9XXX XXXX" and Bing Places has "029XXXXXXX", citation signals conflict across the web. Use the Australian standard format consistently across every directory, your website, and your social profiles: area code, space, four digits, space, four digits. This is not just a Bing issue — NAP consistency is a local ranking signal for Google as well.
Not Connecting to Microsoft Advertising
Once your Bing Places listing is verified, you can link it to a Microsoft Advertising account (formerly Bing Ads) for location extensions — showing your address, phone, and hours alongside paid search ads. For businesses already running Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising offers a direct import from Google Ads campaigns, making the setup straightforward. The cost-per-click on Microsoft Advertising is typically lower than Google Ads for equivalent keywords, as competition is thinner.
Ignoring the Listing After a Business Move
An outdated address on a Bing Places listing sends customers to the wrong location and creates NAP inconsistency that hurts both Bing and Google rankings. Whenever your business moves, update Bing Places, Google Business Profile, your website footer, Apple Business Connect, Yellow Pages, True Local, and any industry directories simultaneously. Do not update just one and assume the others will catch up — they will not.
Bing Places in Your Broader Local SEO Strategy
Bing Places works best as part of a coordinated local presence, not in isolation. The core local SEO stack for an Australian small business in 2026, in priority order:
- A professional website — your source-of-truth; every directory listing points here
- Google Business Profile — highest-priority listing; feeds Google Maps, Google Search, and AI Overviews
- Bing Places for Business — feeds Bing, Copilot, DuckDuckGo local, and Alexa
- Apple Business Connect — feeds Apple Maps and Siri (critical for iPhone users, which account for 57%+ of Australian smartphone share)
- Industry-specific directories — HiPages for trades, HealthEngine for medical, OpenTable for restaurants
- True Local and Yellow Pages AU — legacy citation sources still counted by local ranking algorithms
A professional website with accurate NAP data in the footer is the anchor that search engines cross-reference when validating every other listing. For businesses in hospitality — like ZenPacks Australia, supplying eco-friendly packaging to cafés and restaurants — appearing consistently on Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Apple Maps is the difference between being findable and being invisible, regardless of which device or assistant a customer uses to search.
For tradies and contractors in particular, a Bing Places listing without a website behind it is a missed opportunity: the listing gets the click, then a searcher arrives at a business with no web presence to validate the enquiry. The listing and the website work as a system, not independently.
If your local SEO is a priority beyond just claiming free listings, the SEO retainer approach — building consistent citation signals, managing your listing health across platforms, and tracking local keyword rankings over time — is what separates businesses that reliably appear in map packs from those that appear occasionally and inconsistently.
How Long Until You See Results?
Bing Places verification completes within 24 to 48 hours of submitting your PIN. Once live, your listing begins appearing in Bing local results. Typical timeline:
- Days 1–2: Listing verified and indexed
- Weeks 2–4: Bing crawls your website and cross-references your listing data; map pack rankings stabilise for primary category and suburb queries
- Months 2–3: With consistent NAP data across the web, steady appearances in the map pack for your primary category and adjacent searches
Because competition is low, many Australian businesses report appearing in the top three of the Bing map pack for competitive terms within two to four weeks of claiming their listing. That timeline would be optimistic for Google in almost any metro category.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Bing Places for Business free in Australia?
Yes. Bing Places for Business is completely free — no tiers, no paid features, and no subscription required. Microsoft monetises local business intent through Microsoft Advertising (paid search), but the organic listing costs nothing. The only investment is time: approximately 15 minutes for manual setup, or 5 minutes if you import from an existing Google Business Profile.
Do I need a Microsoft account to use Bing Places?
Yes, a Microsoft account is required to claim and manage a listing. Creating one is free and you do not need an Outlook or Hotmail email address — you can register any existing email address as a Microsoft account at account.microsoft.com. A personal Microsoft account is fine; you do not need a business Microsoft 365 subscription.
Can I import my Google Business Profile into Bing Places?
Yes, and this is the recommended approach if you already have a verified Google Business Profile. From the Bing Places portal, select "Import from Google", sign in to your Google account, choose the location to import, and review the transferred data. Business name, address, phone number, hours, categories, description, and photos all import automatically. You still need to complete Bing's verification step, but all data entry is skipped.
How does my Bing Places listing affect Microsoft Copilot results?
Microsoft Copilot uses Bing Places as a primary data source for local business recommendations. When a Copilot user asks "find a plumber near me" or "best Italian restaurant in Fitzroy", Copilot generates recommendations from verified Bing Places listings. Businesses without a listing, or with incomplete data such as missing hours or phone numbers, are less likely to appear in Copilot responses. In 2026, this is the single strongest reason to claim your Bing listing — Copilot surfaces recommendations to Windows 11 users without them opening a browser or performing a traditional search.
My business already appears on Bing — does that mean it's claimed?
Not necessarily. Bing aggregates business data from web crawls and third-party data brokers, so it is common for a business to appear in Bing results with a pre-populated but unclaimed listing. That data may be outdated — wrong trading hours, former phone number, or previous address. Claiming the listing gives you control over the information. Search for your business on Bing Maps before starting setup — if an unclaimed listing exists, claim it rather than creating a duplicate, which can cause both listings to be suppressed.
Does Bing Places affect my Google local rankings?
Not directly — Google and Bing are independent systems with separate ranking algorithms. However, having consistent NAP data on Bing Places, your website, and other directories strengthens your overall local citation profile. Citation consistency is a confirmed local ranking signal for Google Search as well. The indirect benefit is real: the more consistently your business data appears across the web, the more confident Google's algorithm becomes that your business is legitimate and accurately located at the address you've listed.
Is Bing Places worth setting up before I have a website?
Set up Bing Places regardless — it is free and takes 15 minutes. But a listing without a website is a half-built local presence. When a searcher finds your Bing listing and clicks your business name, they expect to land somewhere credible: a website with your services, pricing, photos, and contact details. A listing that links to nothing, or to a Facebook page, loses a meaningful percentage of ready-to-buy visitors at that handoff. The listing gets you the click; the website converts it.
Should I set up Bing Places before Apple Business Connect?
Set up both, but prioritise based on your customer's device habits. Australians have over 57% iPhone market share, meaning a significant majority of your customers use Apple Maps and Siri for navigation. Apple Business Connect is the listing platform that feeds those results. For a mobile-first customer base — cafés, retail, beauty — Apple Business Connect may be marginally higher priority than Bing Places. For a business with corporate or older clientele on Windows devices, Bing Places and Copilot reach may rank higher. The practical answer: do both in the same week, as the combined setup time is under 30 minutes.
Bing Places costs nothing and takes 15 minutes to claim — if you want a professional website to make every listing worth clicking, weauto builds them for Australian businesses from $99 + GST, live in 5 business days.
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