0131 560 1790 0131 560 1790

Google Webmaster Tools vs. Bing Webmaster Tools

10 Aug 2010 by Graham Lyons - News, SEO , , , No Comments


It’s Tool Time!

You may well have come across a post a short while ago in which I reviewed some of the newer features available in Bing Webmaster Tools, namely, Audience Intelligence. While this was fun and everything, it was a very drilled down review of a single set of features in Bing’s webmaster experience so I felt it would be worthwhile doing a proper comparison between Bing Webmaster Tools and its older and slightly more experience cousin, Google Webmaster Tools.

Serious Question

Now before getting into the reviewing action, the obvious question really should be answered: What’s the point of optimising for Bing when Google has such a massive advantage in user numbers?

Well, Google is indeed basically the Alpha and the Omega of search engines. Currently with a 90.37% market share worldwide, 80.04% in the US and 92.09% in the UK, Google is where the vast majority of internet users go first to search for something and the logical first choice for you when deciding which search engine to optimise your site for…so you should, first. However, Bing may now be worth optimising for too.

What’s happening over at Microsoft is quite exciting. They are building a hybrid gangster super cat to throw in amongst Google’s multicoloured pigeons sunning themselves languidly on the crisp Mountain View lawn. With the amalgamation of Microsoft and Yahoo, Bing will have all the veteran search experience of Yahoo to call on, not to mention access to develop Yahoo’s technology and Microsoft’s big wallet, to help build the trust of worldwide searchers.  Through a high profile advertising campaign both online and offline, Bing is beginning the daunting task of scratching away at Google’s dominance and building their own loyal users. Since Google has been so dominant for so long, it was always going to take some serious cash to take a run at them, and Microsoft certainly has the money.

So should Google be scared?

Probably not for a while, as Bing would be stupid if they thought they could rocket past Google over night. They are however, no doubt playing the long game; planning on building a good strong alternative which can reach the same level of trust which Google commands and, over the next few years, nibble away until they have a percentage to be proud of. People will get tired of Google at some stage, with the odd bit of controversy here (surveillance of Wifi networks) and there (China censorship) people’s devotion may begin to waver. Bing could have timed it just right to pass Google on the way up coming the other way and with your sites already optimised you can be riding that wave with them. For now, the merger of Bing and Yahoo means that it will hold a reasonable enough market share to make it worth you optimising for and with the vast majority of SEOs concentrating on Google, there is less competition for results in Bing.

But don’t forget that you should be optimising for both, and for now spending more time on Google ‘cos it’s still the daddy. Anyway…here is a quick review so you have some comparison between the two sets of webmaster tools.

Features

Bing’s dashboard offers you, in graphical form, a crawl summary, index summary and traffic summary, as well as any pages with crawl errors. Their charts allow you to analyse up to six months of data, (6x more than Google) and when you start to delve into their tabs you see some nice, slightly bigger versions of the graphs from the dashboard. Not especially exciting though. The ‘Traffic’ tab displays a table of ‘Queries’, and for each keyword includes the number of ‘Impressions’, ‘Clicks’ and the ‘Click-Through Rate’. On the bar on the left each tabbed section has a bit more information:

Crawl offers you ‘Crawl Details’ which lets you ‘view details about errors, redirects, malware and exclusions detected during the latest crawl of your site’. The only other option is a section from which to submit a sitemap to allow Bing to access your site’s structure and to make sure they know about all your pages.

Index gives you an ‘Index Explorer’ which lets you explore your sites directory and pages that are in the Bing index. You can search using a number of filters and choose to exclude any malware or robots.txt files you may have. You can in the next section ‘Submit URLs to the Bing index and in the last, ‘Block URLs’ section, you can unsurprisingly block and unblock URLs from appearing in the Bing search results.

There are no extra sections under the Traffic tab.

Immediately upon sitting Google’s dashboard alongside Bing’s dashboard, you can see that Google just has so much more information available to you. Google offers you; a list of search queries including the number of impressions and clicks; a list of links to your site and how many links you have to each page; a list of crawl errors including the type of error and how many there are; a list of significant keywords, and a list of your sitemaps and how many URLs are in the web index. And that’s just on the dashboard. While Bing does demonstrate its information in nice slideable graphs, and includes a handy bar at the top for a quick check on the ups and downs for your sites clicks, impressions, pages indexed and pages crawled, that is unfortunately about the size of Bing.

We would be here all day if I were to go through every facet of Google Webmaster Tools, the best way is to sign up and have a go. There is plenty of guides to help you through. For now, here are some of the major things Google Webmaster Tools has which puts it ahead of Bing:

More Options

Google has the same options as Bing plus a whole load more.

Downloadable

Being able to download the data Google provides is an invaluable option which Bing is yet to offer.

Google Tools Labs

“Webmaster Tools Labs is a testing ground for experimental features that aren't quite ready for primetime. They may change, break or disappear at any time.” As of August this year these include, ‘Fetch As a Googlebot’ which lets you see what a Googlebot sees which you can use for troubleshooting your page; ‘Sidewiki’ for creating a special page owner entry for your website; ‘Site Performance’ for, yes you guessed it, viewing how your site is performing in terms of speed etc and how you can improve it; and ‘Video Sitemaps’ which helps you make your video content easier for users to search for.

Positive

Bing is simple. For a beginner, looking to learn how to start using webmaster tools, Bing would be a good starting point. You would certainly not be overwhelmed with information and would find it hard to get lost. Plus, you may find your sites ranking higher quicker thanks to the level of competition. However, it would only be a matter of time before you were ready to move on to a ‘proper’ webmaster tool platform. You could actually start with Google too, as there are straight forward explanations on most of their features and plenty of Youtube videos from Google’s SEO guru Matt Cutts to keep you informed.

Silverlight Catch

One thing I must mention about Bing is that most of its data is only available graphically, and Microsoft has decided to use a technology called Silverlight which must be downloaded and installed in order for you to see anything. A minor annoyance for some, a major annoyance for those who work primarily with Chrome (it does not work in Chrome). Most frustrating overall.

Unfair Review

To be fair to Bing, it is a self confessed Microsoft work in progress. They are starting from scratch and building from what they consider to be the most important bench marks for search optimisation. To compare them as equals would be very unfair to Bing. When Bing Webmaster Tools has as many features as Google Webmaster Tools it will be worth revisiting this comparison.

Conclusion

Google Webmaster Tools are far superior. Bing is a work in progress. You should still optimise your sites for both though and as both webmaster toolkits are free you have no excuse not to.



You may also be interested in:

  1. New Redesigned Webmaster Tools for Microsoft Bing Microsoft Completely Overhauls its Bing Webmaster Tools but sadly keeps our socks on... ...
  2. Crawl Error Spikes Spotted With Google Webmaster Tools Google will now notify you if is spots an increase in crawl errors. ...
  3. Google Webmaster Tools Improves Link Analysis Information Check your links! ...
  4. Google Webmaster Tools Improvements Google webmaster tools is an indispensable tool for people wanting to optimise their Google rankings. We look at some new...
  5. Country Targeting And Link Building – Webmaster Tools Videos Are Back! Three cheers for the return! Hip Hip!...

No Comments

« Previous Post 
 Next Post »

Leave a Comment

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.