99 Comparison Points Between Google and Bing Webmaster Tools
I spend a lot of time in data. One of my favorite things to do is what I call forensic data diving. It’s where you start with a business problem or conundrum and find the right data for the job to get to the core issues and make data-driven recommendations.
It’s probably not all that different from dumpster diving (umm … from what I’ve read) in that you oftentimes have to winnow through a lot of junk data to get to the truly actionable stuff business decisions are made of.
Outside of analytics, Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) and Bing’s Webmaster Center (BWC) are my dumpsters of choice because they provide the opportunity for you to triangulate your data against your analytics. Otherwise, you find yourself looking at your stats in a vacuum. I mean, okay, you had 4,659 visits last month from your fave money term. Have a brewski on me. But when you see from your webmaster tool data that your average rank was 6 and you actually had 12,400 impressions, that gives you context and a specific goal to work toward. Know what I mean?
It’s been my experience that even seasoned Internet marketers have little idea the depth of data they have at their fingertips in Google Webmaster Tools, let alone Bing’s Webmaster Center, which lives out its days quietly in Google’s shadow. (Chin up, Bing!) This is why I’ve decided to do a series on how to get the most out of Google and Bing’s webmaster tools. And I figured the best starting point was to compare their tools. And, yes, I actually came up with 99 comparison points out of pure luck. (It’s an Irish thing.)
The challenge was organizing the comparison points because Google and Bing’s tools are structured very differently … lest Google accuse Bing of copying their homework again. So to organize the spreadsheet, I used the breakdown of Google Webmaster Tools as the blueprint since more people are familiar with GWT than BWC. But I included the location of that particular feature in Bing, if it indeed it exists.
I have to say, even though Google provides more goodies than Bing, I was surprised to see how much Bing held its own. And there are some features that Bing offers that Google doesn’t, such as historical data <shakes fist at Google for limiting us to a measly 35 days> and Avg Click Position for query terms. (Now we just need a nerdy genius VBA programmer to create an app or Excel plugin that will automagically cull data from GWT and export to Excel, so users can keep their own data archives. I will link to whomever provides that in my next post. You have two weeks.)
Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled program … Bing also tends to offer more granular data that you can evaluate within its interface — especially on a page level — whereas with Google you pretty much have to export to get anything done.
Without further adieu, here’s the comparison. Or you can view it in Google Docs. If you want to copy the spreadsheet into your own Google Docs, just log in to Google and select File > Make a Copy. I’ve locked this copy.
[iframe https://spreadsheets.google.com/a/blueglass.com/pub?hl=en&hl=en&key=0AlakA6rJ7yhodHp2QzJnUnNiN3k0SHBnNXlTV0ZLeWc&single=true&gid=0&output=html&widget=true 660 800]
If you see any errors, please let me know in a comment or shout out on Twitter.
Be sure to sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Center to start gaining your own insights.
And make sure you subscribe to our blog, if you haven’t already, because I’ll be writing follow-up posts on how you can actually use this data along with your analytics data to provide powerful insights. I’ll also be covering how to make your reports sexy with some advanced formatting tips in Excel.
Also, join the fun by following BlueGlass on Twitter and/or connecting with us on Facebook.
Great Post.
I have been using GWT and BWT since a long time now. The Index Explorer , submit URLs (50 Per Month option) and the Link details along with the anchor text for the links are all great features in the recent upgraded version of BWT .
I would like to share 2 posts about Bing Webmaster tools and Google Webmaster Tools published on my blog
http://blog.webpro.in/2011/03/bing-web-master-tools-and-much-needed.html
http://blog.webpro.in/2011/01/using-google-webmaster-tools.html
Thanks, Bharati. Interesting posts. The video in the second post was painfully scripted but good content.
Annie,
Nice! Thanks for taking the time to dig these out. I like the balance between the two tools, as a sharing of information. My students will appreciate knowing this link, and I’m going to have some fun now using both tools for my sites.
Thank you for sharing,
Nancy
Great, Nancy. I’m glad it helps. It was fun exploring the depths of both tools.
Insightful post Annie, thanks for sharing.
Annie!!! This is one darn thorough comparison!!! I so look forward to your series!
I really like Bing’s Webmaster Center. What I find amazing is how many SEOs and analysts ignore Bing altogether. Thank you for the overview. I found some areas I had overlooked.
I’m a big fan of Microsoft’s IIS SEO Toolkit. A few items missing in the spreadsheed (X) for Bing are covered in the SEO Toolkit, e.g. HTML suggestions. I imagine they see BWC and and the SEO Toolkit as working hand-in-hand together.
I’m wondering if for Row 145, Video Sitemaps, if you want to make a note that Bing does honor and find video sitemaps if they are identified in the robots.txt file. It would be nice if that was part of the tool, however.
Thanks, Dana! Okay, for our next Skype call you’ll have to show me how to use IIS SEO Toolkit. I installed it and then was lost. I heard there’s a lot of good data though. And thanks for the feedback. You’re the best. :)
Annie,
I love it!
I do agree that Bing does a much better job on the transparency of how you are performing in the SERPs, my issue is that the amount of factors that influence your Google search query data such as Local & Universal skew out your numbers and you can’t break them out.
Hey David, at least GWT offers some segmentation in its tool set. I do segment out all but US traffic for clients whose target audience is US-based and take a peek sometimes at the different types of searches (image, web, mobile, etc.) But, yeah, tracking universal is a bit of a conundrum.
Annie,
Thanks for sharing such a valuable information.
It was great to know about GWT and BWT.
We are also using Yahoo site explorer which might not have the same depth of functionality. The yare all important to register a website for better and faster indexing a correct website, not to forget the URL and domains without www to not be duplicated in search engine index.
Great article
Thanks
Bing has been steadily developing and enhancing new tools to Bing Webmaster Tools . But the technique they are using to crawling websites or web pages is somewhat embarrassing when you compared to Google search engine. If they are focusing more on crawling and increasing their crawled pages, it would be more efficient to list out the most relevant SERP results for search string. Otherwise they wont compete google in Search algo..
Yeah, Bing definitely doesn’t have the same brawn. I think, instead, they went for adding more sophistication to some of GWT’s most popular features. The unfortunate thing is Bing has done a terrible job of getting the word out about what their webmaster tools have to offer.
Thanks Annie this is an interesting Article. :)
Hello
Gr8 comparison very nice thanks for value information shared. but the bing takes usually very long time to crawl and index the new sites and also some function are under beta version but yeah bing will have strong competition with any search engine in near future as the algorithm and visual results are good.
thanks
Thanks Annie, I have been using GWT since long but wasn’t using BWT. After reading ur article i am tempted to use it too :)