Bing has revamped its webmaster tools and it now boasts of a new user interface with a tool that makes it a somewhat replacement of the Yahoo Site Explorer- the Link Explorer. Other changes include better presentation of the data, an SEO analyzer and SEO reports too. The SEO reports will give the webmasters some feedback on common SEO issues. The new features and tools have these prominent additions:
New User Experience
The renovated Webmaster Tools has an entirely new look and feel that is fresh yet simple at the same time. The interface allows for simplified access to data, information and better account management. On the new dashboard one can quickly see the performance of sites, primarily as a percentage of change for the chosen date range. With this date range selector once can see data as per any of the presets, or to a custom range selected.
You can also get trended reports based on data like crawl errors, for up to the previous six months.
Link Explorer
The tool which will seem the most exciting to the SEOs is- the new Link Explorer. This tool is being seen as a replacement to Yahoo’s Site Explorer. As you know, the Yahoo Site Explorer is being sorely missed for its ability to provide external link data for other sites. Since the Yahoo Site Explorer was shut down last year, SEOs have been looking for other options to see incoming (external or internal) links to just that URL or the entire site.
As Bing says, “Users can also change the scope to show links pointed to either a domain, as shown below, or an individual URL. Other refinements can help you search by anchor text and by keywords found on a page pointing to you.”
SEO Reports and Analysis
Bing’s new addition has SEO reports provide feedback on 15 SEO best practices. As Bing says, “Using approximately 15 SEO best practices to scan against, it prepares a report to tell you if you are in or out of compliance with the noted best practices. These reports provide aggregated counts of all the issues found, across each of the websites scanned.”
SEO Analyzer
The tools can scan any URL and provide a report to let the webmasters know if the page is in compliance with each best practice or not. As Bing says, “Using this tool is simple: enter the URL you want scanned and hit the Analyze button. In a moment, you’ll see the results of the scan appear on the left hand side of the screen, noting compliance issues and their severity. ON the right, you’ll see the webpage appear with icons hovering over the problem spots. Click on a hover button and it will expand to explain the issue. Click Expand and it will open to fully explain the issue and why it’s an issue. The hover buttons are color coded to match the compliance issues seen on the left.”
The tool will allow webmasters to know easily the areas on the page where work is required.
Certain Other Features
The other features of the revamped webmaster tools include: Fetch as Bingbot (see the page as Bing bots see it); Canonical Alerts (to protect you in case you make a mistake implementing your canonicals) and an updated keyword research tool.
What do you think of these updates? Do share your views.
