Bing Webmaster Tools Down
Update: The Bing Community has an update. Apparently there was a "glitch" that wasn’t site-wide or global. I guess that means it wasn’t a big deal. Whatever. Maybe someone should monitor their own forums so they know when there is a problem.
Maybe Microsoft isn’t really ready to take on Google yet after all.
After making a big splash with the new search engine Bing, Microsoft has added a few new features, such as the much hyped visual search. Many writers and news stories have declared that Bing’s search results are good. Some have stated that Bing’s results are as good as Google’s search results, though I have yet to find anyone who has said that they are better.
However, there is more to running a search engine than headlines and splashy result. The algorithm that ranks and displays search engine results, often called SERPs, is complicated and in need of constant refinement. The tweaks to the algorithm are necessary both to stay ahead of the so-called black hat SEOs, users who use "tricks" to rank higher than their page deserves, as well as to keep up with the fast every changing state of the Internet. Content displayed on webpages is seldom static and with each new innovation comes newer and often tougher things to index and rank.
The only help a search engine can get in this area comes from the willing participation of the community of webpage developers and website managers in the form of what is often termed white hat SEO. The so-called white hat SEOs cater to the search engine companies by ensuring that certain elements that are useful for indexing and cataloging the web are present on the websites that they run.
Microsoft acknowledged as much when it published a multi-part article on its Bing Community website outlining what elements the company would be looking for in its search algorithm. Much of what is written on this Bing SEO article series is old news because it is very similar to much of what Google already has already stated that it looks for in its SERP rankings. These elements are things like keywords in the title tags, and proper use of semantic web design and coding, like putting other important keyphrases in header tags, preferably in descending order of importance.
But, in the end, doing the right things to help out the search engines can be tricky business. Many helpful elements, such as a website’s sitemap, are technical files that can be ruined by even the smallest of typographical errors. For this reason, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have long provided a set of "webmaster tools" that allows the developers of websites to track various elements of how the search index robots, the search algorithms, and even the search results are affected by the actions they take on their sites.
Microsoft wisely rolled out it’s new Bing Webmaster Tools right away. Unfortunately, they are broken.
That’s right. The most basic of tools provided to webmasters are not functioning on Bing’s search engine. A thread posted in the Bing forum is piling up with webmasters who can’t add their websites to Bing webmaster tools, not because of access issues, or security issues, or anything of the sort, but rather because clicking on the "Add Site" button brings up an error saying the file cannot be found.
In other words, the Bing Webmaster Tools need to use the Bing Webmaster Tools to find out they have a broken link on the Bing Webmaster Tools.
It would be irony, if it wasn’t so stupid.
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Why Google Search Is Still Better Than Microsoft Bing
Microsoft Bing was recently released. Early reviews suggested that it was an enormous improvement over the original MSN based search, as well as an improvement over Microsoft’s Live Search.
Although many reviewers reserved judgment about whether Bing was better than Google, a few search engine reviews were so bold as to claim that Bing was equal to Google Search. No major reviewer would make the claim that Bing was better than Google Search. All of which begs the question, "Why should anyone bother to switch?"
One possible motivator is privacy. Google keeps user’s search data for 90 days. But, that isn’t all that Google collects. Google Ads have been installed an countless websites around the web, each of which potentially collects another data point about you and your Internet habits. Google Analytics has been installed on even more websites resulting in yet another potential collection. In short, Google can already see you coming and going, maybe it would be best to perform your searches somewhere else, if another search engine was just as good as Google searches.
Unfortunately, Bing is not as good as Google Search. I haven’t performed any tests, and I haven’t bothered reading anyone else’s tests or searching reviews, or search engine results. I don’t have to. I can tell you that Microsoft Bing is not as good as Google Search without performing a single search query.
How?
Microsoft’s Bing search service offers no method to restrict your searches by date. The lack of a time restricted search is just one reason I never took Live Search seriously either.
Nothing knocks quite as much web spam off the first page of search results like restricting a search to the past month, or past year. Sites looking to snooker you into clicking to see their ad-filled pages built up high-ranking sites and then move on. Revisiting those pages risks unintentionally making edits which lowers the search engine ranking.
More importantly, there are numerous topics for which information that is two years old is no longer accurate. Things like taxes, computer programs, electronics, media, real estate, investing, jobs and careers, and even fields like medicine can have important changes that take what was once true and make it inaccurate, at best, and completely false at worst.
Without a way to limit your searches by time, there is no way to know if the information you find is out of date, unless you already know something about what you are searching for. Doesn’t that defeat the whole point of a search engine?
After all, if you know something about what you are searching for, you might already have a good idea where to find some good information.
In "News" searches only, you can choose to sort by most recent instead of by best match. Of course, that trades one issue for another. Instead of having to wade through the search engine results of a regular web search to find links that a recent, you get to comb through the results by date looking for ones that are relevant. Neither choice is worth doing.
Think I’m exaggerating? Maybe you’re curious about Microsoft’s current search efforts, but you aren’t a huge techie and you don’t know what this year’s search engine is named.
Try this search on Bing: "microsoft search engine"
Actual Screenshot from Microsoft Bing 7/29/09
That 3rd result about "Microsoft’s New Search Engine" looks promising, doesn’t it? (Too bad it’s about Microsoft’s previous search engine. Oh, wait. It is actually about the attempt BEFORE the last attempt! In fact, it is about the beta release of Microsoft’s MSN search engine at search.msn.com! If you’re wondering that is from 2004, five years ago.
Google recently rolled out a "More Options" link on every search page that allows you to use time-based criteria easier and more effectively for any search. Before that innovation, Google allowed you to search within a specific time frame from its "Advanced Search" screen.
In other words, Google has offered date based searching for a long time. Microsoft, a company that has made its entire living off of playing copy cat to other’s innovations, missed the boat on this particular feature. Or, perhaps, they are simply incapable of delivering such queries and results at this time. Either way, the lack of date based searching makes MS Bing a non-starter for this user before a single search is performed.
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