Where Google used to be alone in giving you tools to see how they are indexing your web site, each of the three big search engines now have their own set of webmaster tools.
The newest kid on the block, Bing gives you access to keyword research tools, a robot.txt validator, and a HTTP verifier tool right out of the box. Once you get your site listed, you get details like your domain score, feedback on any crawl issues Bing might have had on your site, your top five pages and a lot more. I have to say, Microsoft really impressed me with their tool set.
Poor Yahoo!, does have a site explorer, and it does pay to sign up and list your web sites on it – just to confirm that Yahoo! is watching you. The problem is that they don’t offer much when it comes to tools you can really get much use out of. Also, why do they think I want a badge to show everybody how many people are linking to a page?
Google’s webmaster tools selection is still top dog as far as features and ease of use. They give you a wide selection of diagnostics tools, your top search queries, keywords, subscriber stats, and more. You can also add a new tab to iGoogle to get instant access to all the tools they provide right on your start page.
Which webmaster tools set does the best job? I think Google still wins hands down, however Bing’s selection of tools for webmasters is rather impressive. I am afraid though, that puts our friends at Yahoo! in third place. With that said though, I suggest you sign up for all three so that you can keep tabs on how well your site is being indexed in each.
Comments are closed.