Bing vs. Google: Webmaster Tools - Part 2
In a previous article, I’ve started analyzing Microsoft’s new search engine Bing versus Google. However I didn’t focus on search results, but we focused on Webmaster tools offered by both Bing and Google.
In this article, I’m going to go on with analyzing Google Webmaster tools and summarize both Bing and Google webmaster tools as well.
Google Webmaster Tools
Home page includes messages that Google may send to webmasters to enhance their sites and a list of sites added by a webmaster.
Dashboard includes 4 sections for first 9 top search queries, crawl errors, external links that refer to my site and a list of sitemaps within site.
Sitemaps page shows available sitemaps for site with total URLs and indexed URLs as well. Page allow deletion and resubmission of the sitemaps and an option to download sitemaps list or data for all sites.
Crawler access page gives details about the robots.txt file within site and checks which options are disabled by the robots.txt file that prevents search engine crawlers see some pages.
Sitelinks are links to interior pages within the site. Google generates these links automatically based on site structure allows Google algorithms do this process.
Change of address is a cool tool that allows faster indexing of the new domain that site moved to and keeping old domain data as if domain was never changed.
Settings of Google Webmaster tools allow webmasters to check target users for a certain country, set preferred domain and set crawling rate either automatically or manually.
Top search queries displays information about each user search queries as for impressions and clickthrough. Clickthrough means user clicks on site links in these searches.
Links to your site page shows a list of links that lead to site.
Keywords page is one of the coolest tools in Google Webmaster tools, because Google bot not only index pages, but also it analyzes every word in the site and finds the most frequently used words within site that a webmaster can add in site meta tags to enhance search results.
Internal links are pages linked by other pages on site.
Subscriber stats are statistics about users who subscribed for site RSS feeds.
Crawl errors is a tools that gives complete details about errors found during site crawling. The cool is that this tool not only for web, but also for WAP access through mobile devices.
Crawl stats page shows graphs about pages crawled by day and kilobytes downloaded per day
The best of the tools is found in the last page I display in this analysis and it’s the HTML suggestion page. This tool finds issues within site while Google bot was crawling the site. These issues if they were well treated will lead to a better experience and performance to enhance site rank on Google search engine. Tool includes 3 sections as for: meta description, title tag and non indexable content with capability to download these issues and a date for last updates.
Summary
I’d never found any powerful Webmasters tool like Google Webmasters tools. I can consider it a perfect for any webmaster who doesn’t want to invest extra money for paid tools and the greatest investment to get their site on top ranks of Google search results.
Searching for Ahmed Mahdy’s site contents on Bing and Google
Now after displaying and analyzing features of Bing and Google Webmaster tools, I’ve made a real test about searching for site contents.
Searching: Ahmed Mahdy
Bing
As seen, after the sponsored sites, you can find 2 sites with title: [Ahmed Mahdy - “From Community. To Community”]. This was my old URL that was cancelled! And still yet indexed since the old Live Search!
My site –which you’re on now- is ranked 5th using my name as reference. No more results about it on Bing.
Google
As seen, Google ranks my site the second and third after an old indexed site before. First result of my site is for the root URL, second one for the items tagged with my name. Really cool!
Searching: Imagine Cup WWF
Bing
As seen, Bing never found any result for my site for a post has the text: Imagine Cup WWF.
Google
As seen, Google firstly ranks the highest priority sites in their list which include same search results “here MSDN Blogs in this case”, while my site rank taken place in third and fourth positions.
Overall Summary
Bing Webmaster Center is a very basic tool in comparison with Google Webmaster tools. Microsoft is still in need of a very long time to be able to create more professional tools for webmasters. Google would still the top of search engines for long years.
Bing is more likely to be Live search with a replacement for Live logo and URL. Bing search engine yet was designed for USA to let them make decisions, while Google doesn’t make any difference between any country.
If you’re not American citizen and would like to use Bing, so you’re so unlucky, since whole Microsoft web based services was only designed for USA: Bing, Live Translator, adCenter and more.
Microsoft should re-take another step to enhance Bing and its web better more. We might see those changes in the next few years. Hoping so…