Bing has launched the redesigned Webmaster Tools which are set to focus on three areas: crawl, index and traffic to provide a simplified and more intuitive experience – Kristen, the Bing Community and Blog owner. Since the launch of Bing, Microsoft has lagged behind Google and despite the Bing-Yahoo marriage and most recently making the headlines by jumping on the Lebron train, closing the gap on Google has been no easy feat. While we have started seeing some Bing search results over at Yahoo the official change-over date is a few months away so there is still some time to optimize for Bing.
The redesigned Webmaster tools while focusing on crawl, index and traffic are devoid of the the backlink reports. There is no word if this is due to an attempt to integrate with Yahoo Site Explorer or if this feature has been removed completely. Accuracy of these reports is always questionable however it was a good guide especially for a newer site to gauge their efforts and analyze their links. According to Search Engine Land, there are a few other items that are missing in the redesign:
- Robots.txt validator – This tool enabled you to test a robots.txt file to see if it blocked and allowed what you expected. Google provides a similar tool.
- Domain score – I don’t think anyone will be sad that this “feature” has gone away. No one could ever figure out what it (or the related page score) could possibly mean.
- Language and region information – This was potentially useful information, particularly in troubleshooting.
Bing has added some new features that do seem to provide some useful information especially for those that are just jumping on board and paying a bit more attention to Bing.
Bing Webmaster Tools New Features
1. Index Explorer- view pages from your site that have been indexed and take note of ones to submit the ones that have not been. Additionally, you can filter reports by specific criteria or via the directories.
2. Crawl Details – view details about errors, malware, redirects and any exlusions from the last site crawl.
3. Submit URL – similar to a XML Sitemap but these are submitted individually and up 10 urls each day and a limit of 50 each month. Unsure of the actual purpose however maybe it tells Bing that you really want this indexed right now??
4. Block URL – block/remove pages you do not wish to be contained in the Bing search results. Be careful as there are no additional steps to take as with Google where you have to also block the URL with the robots.txt and a robots meta tag, or a 404.
New to Bing webmaster tools? Registration is easy and you should start to be receiving data within 2-3 days. If you did aready register and did not copy your backlink information, you are not going to be able to do so as you are not prompted to upgrade, they have already done this for you. Trusting that this is just removed temporarily while they integrate with Yahoo Site Explorer this will be re-introduced and be better than ever (better not necessarily meaning 100% accurate of course).
The webmaster tools are very similar to Google with a few exceptions that new users will need to adapt to. With the impending search takeover looming it is beneficial to get set up and our site ready for Bing as they will have a bigger chunk of the search market and start bridging the gap to Google’s share.
photo credit: Thomas Carrillo
