Google Search Console vs Bing Webmaster Tools

Google Search Console shows how Google Search sees and sends traffic to your site. Use it for queries, clicked pages, indexing, and Core Web Vitals. It is your pre‑click view for Google users, which for most sites is the majority of search traffic.

Bing Webmaster Tools covers Bing, Microsoft Copilot, Yahoo Search and part of DuckDuckGo. It adds research and diagnostics that Google does not offer: a backlink comparison against another domain, keyword research with volumes, a Site Scan crawler, and IndexNow URL submission with an API.

You do not pick one. You run both. Measure your Google traffic in Search Console. Use Bing’s research, crawling and link tools for ideas and fixes, then apply them across both engines.

• Backlinks: a report with a rival comparison. Pick another domain and see how your link profile stacks up. Handy for a quick link gap view without a paid suite.
• Keyword Research: volumes, ideas and seasonality views to plan content. Use it to sketch topics before you open a writer brief.
• Site Scan: a built‑in crawler that flags broken links, missing titles and other on‑page issues. A fast sweep before a deployment helps catch regressions.
• Site Explorer: browse your site’s structure from Bing’s view to spot orphan areas and deep paths.
• IndexNow and URL submission: push new or updated URLs to Bing with an API. Useful for product drops and time‑sensitive pages.

Example: compare backlinks for yourproduct.com against rival.com, find missing links on “/guides/getting-started”, and pitch those sources. Then run Site Scan, fix 404s, and resubmit changed URLs through IndexNow. The next Bing crawl sees clean pages and new links to chase.

Google Search Console shows the traffic that drives most small products. The Performance report gives queries, pages, countries, devices, search appearance and dates, with filters, regex and 16 months of data. You can compare periods and track average position, clicks and impressions. The query table omits anonymised queries.

Indexing is clearer in Google’s tools. URL Inspection checks a URL, and the Indexing section groups reasons such as Discovered, Crawled, Noindex or Redirected. The Sitemaps report shows status, the date last read and URLs discovered. It accepts a URL for a sitemap or index. Google reads lastmod when it is consistently accurate and ignores changefreq and priority. A sitemap may hold up to 50,000 URLs or 50 MB uncompressed and can only list URLs on its own host or an approved cross‑host setup.

For speed, the Core Web Vitals report groups URLs into Poor, Needs improvement and Good for mobile and desktop using field data. A low‑traffic page may have no data. Use this to pick which templates to fix first. Aim for about 2.5 seconds LCP, 0.1 CLS and 200 ms INP.

Crawl Stats, in Settings, shows total crawl requests, download size and average response time over 90 days. It breaks down by response code, file type, purpose, and Googlebot type. Host status covers robots.txt fetch, DNS and server connectivity. This is the fastest way to spot server or CDN incidents that hit discovery.

1. 1

   Verify ownership in Google Search Console

   Choose Domain for full coverage and add a DNS TXT record. Or use URL‑prefix with an HTML file, meta tag, Google Analytics tag or Google Tag Manager snippet. Keep the token in place or verification lapses. Add extra owners as needed.

2. 2

   Submit a clean sitemap to Google

   Add https://yourproduct.com/sitemap.xml in the Sitemaps report. Check Status, the date last read and URLs discovered. If lastmod is unreliable, remove it until you can generate it accurately.

3. 3

   Open Bing and import your site

   In Bing Webmaster Tools, use the one‑click import from Google Search Console. Or verify with an XML file, meta tag or a DNS CNAME if you do not want to connect Google.

4. 4

   Enable crawling and discovery in Bing

   Submit your sitemap URL. Turn on IndexNow with the API key in your system, then send URLs on publish and on major updates.

5. 5

   Run a first pass for issues

   In Bing, start a Site Scan on https://yourproduct.com. Fix broken internal links or missing titles it flags. In Google, check Indexing for spikes in Excluded or Errors.

6. 6

   Confirm performance baselines

   In Google, save a Performance report filter for your brand query and for non‑brand pages like /pricing. In Bing, open Search Performance and note starting clicks and impressions.

• Each morning: check Google’s Performance report for drops on /pricing and /guides. Compare the last 7 days to the prior 7 days.
• Each deploy: run Bing’s Site Scan on the changed section. Fix title, meta and link issues before you push more code.
• Each week: use Bing’s Keyword Research to find two queries near your features. Plan one new page, for example “/guides/export-to-csv”.
• Each week: compare backlinks against a rival in Bing. Pick two gaps to chase. Update your /press or /links page when you land them.
• Each month: review Google’s Crawl Stats for spikes in response time or 5xx. Check Core Web Vitals groupings and pick one template to improve.

A healthy week looks like this: Google shows rising impressions on “export to csv” and clicks to “/guides/export-to-csv”. Bing’s backlink comparison shows two new domains. Site Scan reports no broken links. Core Web Vitals for your guides move from Needs improvement to Good on mobile.

In Google, the Removals tool can hide a URL or a prefix for about six months and clears the cached copy. It does not remove the page from the index. For pages that must go, return 404 or 410, or add noindex. You can also clear a cached URL while keeping the result, or request removal of outdated content you do not own. A SafeSearch tab lists URLs reported as adult.

Google’s Links report shows External links and Internal links tables, up to 1,000 rows in the UI and export, as a sample of links Google knows for the property. Third‑party link indexes collect differently so counts will differ. For a full link audit you still need a crawler or a dedicated link index, but Bing’s rival comparison is a quick win when you only have an hour.

Google’s Search Analytics API matches the Performance dimensions. It returns up to 25,000 rows per request with pagination, and data lags two to three days. The URL Inspection API allows 2,000 calls a day per property and 600 a minute. The Sitemaps and Sites APIs manage submissions and properties. The BigQuery bulk export delivers daily tables with the full row set, which lets you build reports without sampling limits.

Bing also offers APIs for submission and data access. If you only need to push URLs, IndexNow is the simplest path. For dashboards, keep Google’s bulk export as your spine and layer in Bing metrics where you care about those markets.

If Google sends most of your traffic, Search Console is where you spot demand shifts, intent mismatches and template‑level issues. Use Bing for research and crawling, and to grow presence in Bing’s network. The work you do for content quality, internal links and speed helps on both sides.