Bing Webmaster Tools vs. Google Search Console

Bing Webmaster Tools is pretty much essential for any SEO analyst. Not all SEO optimizations carry over between Google and Bing and it's good to get up-front validation on crawl errors from the search engine itself. Bing Webmaster Tools is especially relevant now that Yahoo and Bing are under the same roof.

Incentivized

If you just want to understand how much traffic you're getting from Google organic search results, and study the queries and landing pages that make up this traffic, this is a great tool. If you also want to figure out where you may be missing opportunities or making it hard for people to find your site, this can help with that. However, GSC is not going to give you step by step instructions for how to fix SEO issues, and won't help prioritize anything either. It's essentially like a car dashboard, but doesn't do any driving or tell you how to drive.

Incentivized

• Site crawls, once initiated, don't take very long to complete
• SEO analysis tells you which pages are not following best practices
• Page Traffic reports tell you which of your sites are appearing in search, their position in the rankings, and how it's been performing over time
• You can see the keywords people use to search for your site

Incentivized

• Provides details on what other sites contain backlinks to your site, along with the page they direct to within your site
• Displays impressions and click throughs for Google search queries
• Individual page performance by location and device category as it pertains to generating clicks leading to your site
• Basic indexing and readability issues within your site
• The new interface that just rolled out is much easier on the eyes

Incentivized

• The UI is simple but very boring. It's very Microsoft and not very elegant.
• On the display of analytics, it is also very simple, without the ability to change graphs or charts to better display data.
• Bing Businesses could be better integrated and takes you to another site to view that data.

Incentivized

• I'd like more instructions about how to respond to certain errors I see - it can be difficult to understand when you see a red error message what it really means and how to fix it.
• I'd appreciate warnings being 'ranked' somehow to understand what's really a big deal, and what might be a minor issue.
• Search analytics is helpful but not comprehensive - you can only go back so far in the data, and can't see all the search terms that are sending traffic to your site.

Incentivized

Very usable overall, quick to find information and conduct analysis for example of how a price of content is performing on Bing search. User interface is a bit clunky at times but easy enough once you get used to it.

Incentivized

It's easy to use, but some features are lacking a clear explanation. Somethings don't always match up. For example, the Core Web Vitals often doesn't match what you would see in the Chrome Lighthouse report or the Google Page Speed Insights tool. The tool itself is a little too basic and has to be used alongside other SEO tools and other Google properties such as Analytics

Incentivized

As with all Google software, your primary source of help is their forums, their knowledge base articles, or whatever tutorials you can find on the web. Often answers on their forums are not straightforward and may not address the actual issue you're experiencing. The KB articles are typically written like instruction manuals - for better or for worse. Tutorials on the web may vary, but the odds are good someone out there had the same questions as you and was kind enough to document their experience.

Incentivized

Bing, which is free to use, is a good adjunct to our use of all these tools. If I had to stop using all but two, Bing and Google would be the ones that I would keep. Others have their place in our cycle based on what Google and Bing are reporting, but these are our early warning systems. Even if they don't offer the best way to a solution, they are the final word in what appears via their search index.

Incentivized

We are using Ahrefs and SEMRush along with the search console. Ahrefs helps in creating our backlink strategy while SEMRush for content gaps and opportunities. Search console is more preferred as it is completely free and data comes straight from Google. But you cannot see backlinks and ads in search console.

Incentivized

• Bing Webmaster Tools has allowed us to index our website and individual web pages quickly and efficiently for SEO purposes.
• It has provided us with good feedback in terms of applying SEO best practices to our web pages.

Incentivized

• I have used Search Console for every web project I have worked on. The results have always been outstanding.
• Surprising insights can be gained from the keyword analysis. I have discovered multiple profitable channels that weren't even on the radar.
• AMP has been a game changer over the last few years and this tool makes it extremely simple to ensure your pages are mobile friendly.

Incentivized