# Bing Places for Business: Claim Your Free Listing (and Why It Feeds ChatGPT and Copilot in 2026) > Bing Places is Microsoft's free version of Google Business Profile, and in 2026 it quietly feeds Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT search. Here is how to claim it in about five minutes by importing straight from Google. *Roald, Founder Fonzy · Sep 25, 2026 · 8 min read* Source: https://www.fonzy.ai/blog/bing-places-for-business --- **Short answer:** Bing Places for Business is Microsoft's free version of Google Business Profile, the listing that puts your name, hours, and phone into Bing search and Bing Maps. Claiming it matters in 2026 because Bing's data feeds Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT search, so an unclaimed listing shapes what AI tells customers about you. Most small business owners have never touched Bing Places, and the reason is always the same: "nobody uses Bing." That was a fair call five years ago. It is the wrong way to think about it now, and the thing that changed is not Bing's traffic. It is where Bing's data ends up. ## What is Bing Places for Business? Bing Places is Microsoft's free local listing product. In Microsoft's own words on the official Bing Places blog, it is "a free online platform where businesses can create and manage their listings to appear in Bing search results and Bing Maps." If you have set up a Google Business Profile, this is the same idea on Microsoft's side: your business name, address, phone number, hours, website, and photos, held in one place that Bing pulls from. You claim it once. You keep it accurate. That is the whole job. There is no ad spend, no monthly fee, and no storefront requirement for service businesses that travel to the customer. Think of a mobile locksmith who works out of a van across three towns. On Google, that locksmith already lists a service area instead of a walk-in address. Bing Places handles the same setup. The listing is the record; Bing and everything downstream of Bing reads from it. ## Why almost nobody bothers, and why that instinct is outdated Here is the honest part. If you rank Bing purely by search traffic, it is small. StatCounter puts Bing at roughly 4.5% of worldwide search as of August 2026, against Google's 91.1%. In the US the number runs higher, closer to 7.5%, but it is still a sliver next to Google. So if the only question is "how many people search on Bing," skipping it looks reasonable. That is exactly the trap. In 2026 a Bing listing is not really about people typing into Bing. It is about the AI assistants that read Bing's index behind the scenes and then answer your customers in plain English. Bing's reach is no longer just Bing. This is the same reason we tell owners not to treat any single channel as the finish line. If you want the wider picture of where buyers actually start now, [how customers find businesses in 2026](/blog/how-customers-find-businesses-2026) walks through it. Bing Places is one quiet input into that map. ## The real 2026 payoff: Copilot and ChatGPT read Bing Two things happened that flipped Bing from optional to worth five minutes. First, Microsoft built Copilot into Windows and Edge, so it sits on millions of desktops by default. Microsoft has been explicit that Bing Places connects to that AI layer. On the same Bing Places blog, Microsoft says it is "continuing to invest in features... from deeper integrations with Bing Maps and Copilot." Your listing is not sitting in a dead product. Microsoft is wiring it into the assistant. Second, ChatGPT's web search leans on Bing. As Search Engine Roundtable reported, "the ChatGPT Search index comes from Bing." The Verge quoted an OpenAI engineer saying search "was built with a mix of search technologies, including Microsoft's Bing," and an OpenAI VP of Engineering wrote in an AMA, "we use a set of services and Bing is an important one." So when a customer opens ChatGPT and asks for help finding a business, part of what it reaches for is Bing's data. Data that comes from listings like yours. Put those together and the math changes. A listing you claim once can surface in Bing, in Bing Maps, in Copilot on Windows, and in ChatGPT's answers. That is the rare "do it once, show up in more places" move, and it is why the "nobody uses Bing" reflex now costs you. If you want to go deeper on the AI side specifically, [optimizing for Microsoft Copilot](/blog/optimize-for-microsoft-copilot) covers what shapes those answers. This article is the plumbing underneath it: the listing the assistant reads from. ## One practitioner's log check, framed honestly You do not have to take Microsoft's or OpenAI's word for the connection. One developer, Ivan Hristov, went looking in his own server logs. As quoted by Search Engine Roundtable, he wrote: "After some testing, I found a quirk in the ChatGPT search functionality: it appears that most searches are powered by Bing's index. I confirmed this by checking my Cloudflare/NGINX logs, despite ChatGPT having its own bots." Treat that for what it is: one practitioner's observation from his own traffic, not an official OpenAI spec. But it lines up with what The Verge reported and what OpenAI's own engineers have said. When an independent log check, a journalist's reporting, and the company's own statements all point the same way, the pattern is worth acting on. ## Step 1: Go to the Bing Places site and search for your business Open bing.com/forbusiness. Note the address, because Microsoft moved the portal there from the old bingplaces.com. Search for your business name and location first. If a listing already exists, you claim it rather than create a duplicate; duplicates split your data and confuse the AI tools reading it. If nothing comes up, you start a new listing. Sign in with a Microsoft account, the same kind you would use for Outlook or a Windows login. ## Step 2: Import your details straight from Google This is the step that saves you the typing. Instead of re-entering your name, hours, and phone by hand, Bing pulls them from your existing Google Business Profile. Microsoft rebuilt this flow and describes it plainly on the Bing Places blog: "We've made major improvements to how business owners import listings from Google. The new import flow is faster, more reliable, and better at preserving key attributes like business name, hours, and contact details." In practice you connect the Google account tied to your profile, pick the location, and Bing copies it over. For a business with one address it takes about five minutes. Review what came across, fix anything stale, and move on. If you have not set up the Google side yet, do that first; [optimizing your Google Business Profile](/blog/google-business-profile-optimization) is the source of truth you are importing from, so it pays to get it clean before you copy it. ## Step 3: Verify your listing Bing needs to confirm you actually run the business before the listing goes live. You verify through one of a few methods: a phone call or text with a code, an email, or a mailed postcard with a PIN. Phone and email clear in minutes. The postcard is the slow path and can take a week or so to arrive, so choose phone or email if the option is offered. Until you verify, your changes sit in a pending state and are not trusted, so do not skip this and assume you are done. ## Step 4: Keep your name, address, and phone identical everywhere Once your Bing listing is live, the job is consistency. Your name, address, and phone number, often shortened to NAP, need to match exactly across Google, Bing, and every other place your business appears. Not "Street" on one and "St." on another. Not two different phone numbers. AI assistants weigh how confidently they can identify you, and matching details across sources is a strong signal that you are one real business, not a guess. A salon that lists "Ave" on Google and "Avenue" on Bing, with an old landline on a directory site, gives an assistant three slightly different businesses to reconcile. A salon with one identical set of details everywhere gives it one clean answer to repeat. That is the difference between being named and being skipped. If you want the full spread of places to keep aligned, [local citations for small businesses](/blog/local-citations-small-business) lists them. ## What actually happens when someone asks Copilot for "a good plumber near me" Picture the moment. A homeowner in the next town over has a leak. They open Copilot on their Windows laptop, or ChatGPT on their phone, and type "a good plumber near me." The assistant does not crawl the whole web in that second. It reaches for structured local data it already trusts, and for both of those tools part of that data traces back to Bing. If your plumbing business has a claimed, accurate Bing listing with the right service area and hours, you are a candidate to be named. If Bing knows nothing about you, you are not in the running for that answer, no matter how good your reviews are on Google. The assistant repeats what it can identify. An empty Bing record is an easy way to be left out of a conversation your competitor gets named in. Across the owner-run businesses we have helped get found, the pattern is consistent and a little boring: the ones that show up in AI answers are almost never doing anything clever. They have simply claimed every free listing and kept the details identical, so there is nothing for an assistant to trip over. The businesses that get skipped are usually not beaten on quality. They are beaten because half their listings are unclaimed or out of date, and the AI has no confident record to pull. Coverage and consistency do most of the work; the clever tactics matter far less than owners fear. This is also why Bing Places is worth doing even though Bing's own search traffic is small. You are not chasing Bing's 4.5%. You are making sure the record exists for everything that reads Bing. For the broader Bing search picture beyond the listing itself, [showing up on Bing](/blog/show-up-on-bing) covers ranking and content; this piece is strictly about claiming the listing that feeds it. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is Bing Places for Business free? Yes. Microsoft describes it as "a free online platform where businesses can create and manage their listings." There is no fee to claim or maintain a listing, and no ad purchase is required to appear in Bing's local results or in the AI tools that read Bing's data. ### Do I need a physical storefront? No. Service businesses that go to the customer, like a plumber, a mobile groomer, or a locksmith, can list a service area instead of a walk-in address, the same way Google Business Profile handles it. You do need a real business with a way for Bing to verify you. ### What if I already have a Google Business Profile? That is the easiest case. You import straight from Google rather than retyping anything. Microsoft says the rebuilt import flow is "faster, more reliable, and better at preserving key attributes like business name, hours, and contact details," so your existing Google details carry over in about five minutes. ### How long does the whole thing take? If you import from Google and verify by phone or email, plan for five to ten minutes of setup and a few minutes for verification. If you verify by mailed postcard, the listing stays pending until the card arrives, which can take a week or so. Choose phone or email verification when it is offered. That homeowner asking Copilot for a plumber is not going to check whether you bothered with Bing. They will just hear a name, and it will either be yours or someone else's. Claiming Bing Places is one of the few five-minute jobs that decides which. Fonzy handles this kind of quiet, repeatable groundwork across search and AI so owners can keep running the business instead of the listings. ## Sources - [Microsoft Bing Places blog: Bing Places is a free platform, the rebuilt Google import flow, and deeper Copilot integration](https://blogs.bing.com/search/October-2025/Introducing-the-New-Bing-Places-for-Business-Built-for-Business-Owners,-Powered-by-Research) - [Search Engine Roundtable: ChatGPT Search runs on Bing's index, citing The Verge and OpenAI](https://www.seroundtable.com/bing-powers-chatgpt-search-38345.html) - [StatCounter Global Stats: Bing's worldwide and US search market share](https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share) - [Ivan Hristov on LinkedIn: server-log check finding ChatGPT search traffic powered by Bing's index](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7258597583353245696/) --- Published by [Fonzy](https://www.fonzy.ai) — expert articles that get you found on Google and AI search.