Updated Bing Webmaster Tools

[engine]

Updated Bing Webmaster Tools [bing.com]

So what’s new in the updated Bing Webmaster Tools? Everything. With your feedback in mind, the Bing Webmaster Team decided to hit the reset button and rebuild the tools from the ground up.

The redesigned Bing Webmaster Tools provide you a simplified, more intuitive experience focused on three key areas: crawl, index and traffic. New features, such as Index Explorer and Submit URLs, provide a more comprehensive view as well as better control over how Bing crawls and indexes your sites. Index Explorer gives you unprecedented access to browse through the Bing index in order to verify which of your directories and pages have been included. Submit URLs gives you the ability to signal which URLs Bing should add to the index. Other new features include: Crawl Issues to view details on redirects, malware, and exclusions encountered while crawling sites; and Block URLs to prevent specific URLs from appearing in Bing search engine results pages. In addition, the new tools take advantage of Microsoft Silverlight 4 to deliver rich charting functionality that will help you quickly analyze up to six months of crawling, indexing, and traffic data. That means more transparency and more control to help you make decisions, which optimize your sites for Bing.

We have good news for all the veteran users of the Bing Webmaster Tools. Your existing Webmaster Center accounts have been automatically upgraded to the new tools. This means that starting today, you’re already a registered user of the new Bing Webmaster Tools. There’s no need to create a new account, change ownership verification codes, or re-enter site data. If you don’t have a current account, you can easily sign-up and register your sites to begin using the new tools.

[bing.com...]

[johnnie]

Well, Chrome crashed first time I loaded it.

[arizonadude]

Well, Chrome crashed first time I loaded it.

Try using a real browser next time instead of Google's spybot and it won't crash.

[goodroi]

Dear Bing,

Thank you! You are moving in right direction and providing another good source of information. IMHO all all webmasters should at least test drive these tools. I bet most people that read this thread have never logged into Bing's webmaster control panel. As good and helpful as your new & improved toolset is there is still something missing.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE give the seo community a quality backlink research tool.

[atlrus]

I wounder how all this would relate to the upcoming Yahoo traffic...

[wildbest]

Why do they require installing Silver Light in order to use Bing WMT?

[maximillianos]

Why do they require installing Silver Light in order to use Bing WMT?

Ha. That is great. Microsoft is incapable of building a site that does not require proprietary technology.

[arizonadude]

Ha. That is great. Microsoft is incapable of building a site that does not require proprietary technology.

For the same reason Google requires you to conform your way of thinking to theirs.

Because they can.

If you don't want to install it, then don't use it.

[karter]

I just logged in, its a real improvement , lots of detail, and so far, the information they provide appears to be geniune and not designed to obfuscate, they appear to be closer to Siteexplorer in this regard

BUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE EXCELLENT LINK EXPLORER
present in the old toolbox

[wildbest]

Why do they use one and the same file name (BingSiteAuth.xml) to authenticate my website? This is exposing my Bing WMT user/website id to everyone!

[dvduval]

I was expecting more that this the way they talked it up; something that was competitive with Google's webmaster tools. To me, all they did was add some pretty charts but provide little additional data. That said, I hope they will do more as I would use it.

[Vimes]

Well done Bing, very pretty, all the bells and whistle you can think of.

One thing though i had to resubmit my site map, maybe double check that if you already haven't for some reason that wasn't carried over to the new interface.

Vimes.

[setzer]

Gave it a try. Says no data for everything.

Why do they use one and the same file name (BingSiteAuth.xml) to authenticate my website? This is exposing my Bing WMT user/website id to everyone!

No it's not.. the userid is hashed.

[maximillianos]

For the same reason Google requires you to conform your way of thinking to theirs.

Because they can.

If you don't want to install it, then don't use it.

I won't be using it. Not by choice though.

I cannot use Bing's Webmaster Tools because I run a Linux laptop. Microsoft did not create a version of Silverlight for Linux. And the free open source version (Moonlight by Novell) does not work with their Webmastertools.

So yes, Microsoft once again shows they cannot build something cross-platform... Bravo!

[If someone else got it to work in Ubuntu Linux / Firefox let me know... Would love to check it out]

[karter]

Have you chaps seen the way the indexed urls are listed, in directory order, it quite neat


I am just hoping they bring back the backlink/outward link check, that was the best out their i thought, at least for ones own website, would be nice if one had the option to see competing websites link profile like that too :)

[puckparches]

I like it. Very impressed with the new style.

[hsvs10]

I'm impressed with the new style as well. Has anyone else noticed, when adding new URLs, that the same meta tag populates? Google and even Bing before the redesign populated individual tags per URL. Thoughts?

[poiuy]

Thanks for share, hurriedly collection it

[UserFriendly]

You know, I was thinking "glad they're trying to keep up" until I read the note about Silverlight, and then I just switched to thinking "oh, yeah, that's why I hate Microsoft".

[Angonasec]

I've been a long-time user of the previous rendition of MS tools console, our Bing traffic is highly valued.

But when I logged in to check the new console, all our previous data was void, as though we're required to start again, validating etc. Despite no changes on our site since MS changed.

I baulked at installing the essential "Silverlight" plugin, who wouldn't? But curiosity finally got the better of me, and I tried to install it.

What a relief it was to discover "Silverlight" is INCOMPATIBLE with PPC Macs.

Phew, that was close... like almost walking over the edge of a cliff in the dark.

[azblogtips]

I have tried this and it requested me to install silverlight software. Does this only work with IE or any other browsers?

[savweb]

Everybody check this thread, it's about how adding your site to bing's webmaster tools can influence your bing positions:
[webmasterworld.com...]