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Bing Webmaster Tools – Are you getting The Second Insight?

By 30 Comments

Bing Webmaster Tools is to Microsoft what Google Webmaster Tools is to Google. Bing Webmaster Tools is indeed an awesome tool for webmaster and bloggers to study and gain an insight into their site’s behaviors. Having firsthand information of what happens on your site can help you guide it to success.

But my interactions with other bloggers have shown that most of them are unfamiliar with Bing Webmaster Tools. Most bloggers and webmasters are only familiar with the Google Webmaster Tools and have not bothered exploring the Bing Webmaster Tools. If you don’t have a Bing Webmaster Tools account, now will be a perfect time to sign up. Like Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools provide a detailed insight into what happens on your sight and I prefer to cal this – The Second Insight!

I usually compare data from my Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Webmaster Tools and this helps me gain a better understanding on what is going on, on my site. Relying on just Google Webmaster Tools alone may not be the best; Bing Webmaster Tools helps me understand better what Google Webmaster Tools is talking about.

Must Read: How to use Google WebTools to fix crawl errors on your site

Today I intend to guide you through the various features of Bing Webmaster Tools and give you reasons why you should use it. You only need a Microsoft/Hotmail/Live account to use Bing Webmaster Tools. You can login to Bing Webmaster Tools with your Microsoft/Hotmail/Live account and next thing will be to add your site.

Add a Site

Use the ‘Add a Site’ feature to add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools, simply enter the URL of your homepage and your sitemap URL and choose your highest traffic period and click the ‘ADD’ button to add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools.

add a site

Verify Your Site:

The next option will be to verify your site once you have added it to Bing Webmaster tools. Bing offers several verification methods like XML file verification, META Tag verification and DNS Verification. I always favor the XML file verification method because it is the least technical. Simply download the “BingSiteAuth.xml” file and upload it to your site’s root directory and click on the ‘Verify’ button at the bottom of the page.

Bing Webmaster Tools – Dashboard:

Once your site has been verified, you can now have access to your Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard; on the dashboard you will see data from your Configure My Site, Reports & Data, Diagnostics & Tools, and Messages etc.

Bing webmaster tools - site activity

Configure My Site:

The Configure My Site option will give you all the tools required to correctly configure your site so as to obtain the right analytics report. This includes the Sitemap tools which allow you to submit new sitemaps and also access the report and status of the ones you already submitted. Other tools includes the Submit URLs, Ignore URL Parameters, Crawl Control, Deeps Links, Block URLs, Disavow Links, and Users.

Reports & Data:

The reports and data section provides you with the reports and data gathered on your site over time. Data from this section is exportable to spreadsheet. Tools under this section include the Page Traffic which shows you the traffic stats of the top performing pages on a site. Other Tools include Index Explorer, Search Keywords, SEO Reports, Inbound Links, and Crawl Information.

Diagnostics & Tools:

This section contains useful diagnostics tools to keep your site running effectively. Tools under this section includes the Keyword Research which gives you access to Bing’s keyword research data just like Google’s Keyword tools, other tools includes Link Explorer, Fetch as Bingbot, Markup Validator and SEO analyzer.

Message Center:

The Bing Webmaster Tools Message Center helps you communicate with Bing, if you are having any issues with your site that needs to be addressed like malware detection, crawl errors, page speed issues etc Bing will contact you from here.

Must Read: Why bloggers should use Google Analytics Intelligence Events

Now I hope you can join Bing Webmaster Tools today and start taking advantage of the numerous useful and helpful tools they can provide to making your site better. Gain a second insight into your site activities today from Bing Webmaster Tools. Tell me what you think of Bing Webmaster Tools and how you have used it to gain second insight into your site’s activities.

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Comments

  1. Thanks for sharing, seriously have been neglecting bing webmasters tool, but i think is time i get started working with it.

  5. Hello,
    Nice blog here Nwosu
    All I do with Bing webmaster tool is submit, verify and I’m gone. I hardly visit like I do with Google webmaster. I may just have to take a look.

  7. I have tried Bing Webmasters tools and submitted my blog’s sitemap. But I’m not viewing reports at all. And Bing too have same verification step as like Google’s. And another thing is that Yahoo partnered with Bing, so we need not to submit and monitor sitemaps for these search engines.
    Thanks for sharing.

  8. Hi Nwosu,

    This is like going to a doctor; a 2nd opinion never hurts. You can gain insight into how your site works and how you can improve your visitor experience from an intelligent space. Do a bit more research though a different channel; love the idea.

    Thanks!

    Ryan

  11. Hi Nwosu,

    It’s great that you discussed about Bing Webmaster Tools. I’m using Bing for getting LSI keywords but not exactly using its Webmaster Tools.

    People are simply ignoring Bing because more than 90% of their organic traffic is from single Google. If Bing grows in popularity, definitely more people will be interested to optimize their site for Bing as well :D

  12. Seriously speaking, even though I had my site added to the Bing Webmaster Tools, I never opened it to check, as I do with the Google webmaster tools. I guess I need to give it some more importance from now on.

  13. Hey Nwosu,
    Well that sounds interesting that comparing these two webmaster tools gives you a perfect idea of what your site does and how is it going on in there. I never knew that Bing’s webmaster helped in understanding the Google webmaster tool.

    Thank you for such wonderful post.
    Regards
    Charmie

  19. That is awesome tips! Absolutely, I am currently using Bing Webmaster tool. Now I feel like my yahoo and bing organic is increasingly. It time to adapt because now bing, yahoo, and Facebook are partners so I believe that bing will be the important as soon as possible.

  21. Hi Nwosu,
    I have not used bing webmaster tool not giving much importance for it though as my first preference is Google as like everyone getting decent traffic and people loves it too.In case i might prefer in future if they become popular among people because we always depends on readers and traffic source.

  22. Very informative, Nwosu.
    Most people do not bother to check anything except Google analytics and webmasters.
    I recently got Bing Analytics too in addition to the Bing Webmasters as suggested by you, and it has helped me understand my audience better.

  23. thank you for sharing about bing webmaster tools.. like many other bloggers, i have no idea about it. :) showing some images about how bing webmaster tools are being used is also wise idea since putting pictures increases blog readership

    i will be going to use it.. :)

  24. I generate more than 15% of my organic traffic fro Bing because my blog is optimized for Bing and thats a good amount of traffic and if you do same you can gain from the traffic from Bing and gaining an insight from Bing won’t hurt as well so there is no need waiting till it becomes popular because it already is as it is the second biggest search engine in the world now.

  27. To be very honest. I did not submit my blog to Bing Webmaster. I am currently depending on Google Webmaster Tool only. I will now surely submit my website to Bing now.

  29. wow 15% that’s impressive. Looks like I’ll have to checkout the bing tools and see if there is any changes I need to make.
    thanks!

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