The Bing Bong!

Historically, most SEOs ignore Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) and solely focused on GSC.

Well... maybe we should change that for many reasons,

There's no guarantees that Google will maintain search market dominance in this new era of AI-powered search. Users have so many options right now, and also Google search quality changed.

Bing is another raw data source and we don't have many of those in SEO, do we?

Recently, I've been playing around with Bing Webmaster Tools and I've found few interesting use cases where looking at Bing makes total sense.

In today's newsletter, I'm going to be rambling about Bing Webmaster Tools use cases and few other tips and insights, so buckle up!

TL;DR

• Comparing performance drops in GSC and Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) can help you rule out if a traffic drop is due to a Google update or other SEO issues.
• There are reports that some websites are seeing recoveries in the June 2025 updates, while others are reporting losses, as usual, the best you can do is wait till the update is done, and you have enough data in GSC (and BTW) to analyze.
• BWT site scan feature is a cool way to get a free technical audit for your website. Obviously not perfect, but comparable to many SEO tools on the market right now.
• Comparing the traffic performance between Bing and GSC can also help you diagnose technical SEO issues and rule in/out what needs to be fixed.
• It's easier to rank in Bing, and it also powers multiple LLMs. Maybe it's time we give it some attention?
• A recent study shows that SearchGPT maybe actually relying on Google search!

Google updates

If you're wondering whether your website was hit by a Google update or not, well look no more. Look at performance patterns in Bing, did you also lose traffic? or is it just a Google thing?

If you're traffic drop is due to:

• Change in market or user behavior
• Seasonality
• New competition

You'll probably see same traffic decrease pattern in Bing Webmasters, otherwise, if things look like "business as usual"... then ya, you're very likely to be hit with a Google update.

My GSC

I've personally noticed a sudden drop in clicks in my website's GSC. Is it because of the June update which is still rolling out? I looked at BWT, and I don't get much clicks from there (which is why I'm not sharing a screenshot 😄), but things looked like normal...

Community chatter about the June 2025 update

There's some chit-chats from website owners that they're seeing recoveries from this update, HOWEVER... one noted:

"My traffic went up when the update started, but now its back to the same level it was before the update." - Source

So it's better to wait till the update is over before you make any conclusions. I'll wait till I have more data in both GSC and BWT. But at least now I have a way to isolate the cause - wish me luck ppl 🤷‍♀️

Site scan

Another cool thing you can do with BWT is their Site Scan feature. You can run a site scan to help you identify any technical issues and these type of issues will probably be applicable to Google as well.

Give it a test drive!

Technical SEO issues

Another common challenge for SEOs is to identify the causes of traffic changes, outside of attributing it to Google updates. I've discussed diagnosing SEO traffic drops in my last newsletter and as we all know, there are many reasons that your traffic may have dropped.

If it's not a Google update, that usually leaves us with two main SEO buckets:

• Content
• Technical SEO

If you're content was AI slop, fully written by ai, with no human effort for example, it can rank for a bit, but then the traffic drop will eventually happen, because you know... this content is low quality 🤷‍♀️

If it's not content, then the issue probably maybe technical SEO. But here's where it gets interesting, some technical SEO factors are only related to Google, and may not impact your performance in Bing.

For example, if the technical issue was about crawlability or indexability... then you'll see the same issue in BWT because these are fundamental to any search engine.

But if the issue is, say Core Web Vitals. Bing does not explicitly incorporate CWV into it's ranking systems, so that can cause a discrepancy in performance trends between GSC and BWT.

See how BWT can be useful to diagnose and rule in or out issues?

Bing supports multiple LLMs

Microsoft copilot, Perplexity and ChatGPT (debatable) use Bing search. Which gives the search engine more weight than we usually do, and thus BWT.

The good news is that optimizing for Bing is easier right now. I stumbled across this Bing SEO case study that shows all you need to rank in Bing is:

• Exact-Match Keywords
• Backlinks
• Social Signals
• Clear headings, concise answers, and schema markup
• LLMs and Bing both reward updated content, so keep your content fresh and updated.

So there's a way to influence your visibility in some of the LLMs, and it's called Bing! No, not that Bing 😄

Which search engine does SearchGPT use?

A recent study by Alexis Rylko is challenging which search engine does SearchGPT use? Officially, it's Bing.

But.... Alexis compared the URLs cited in SearchGPT with the top results from Bing and Google, and found that 🥁🥁🥁:

• There's only 30% URL match with Bing top results
• There's 90% URL match with Google top results

This and among other data to backup this, it seems that SearchGPT does use Google search - sorry Bing 🤷‍♀️

And That’s a Wrap (Almost 😄)

In times like this, innovation and making the best use of what you have is going to elevate your work.

We don't have plenty of raw data in SEO other than GSC and Bing, my recommendation is try to make the best use of both!

Give Bing a go if you aren't already and let me know if you have any cool tips, I may add them to this blog!

That's that for today folks! And see you next newsletter.

*Disclaimer: This blog is fully written by ME! I try to switch between using LLMs for writing and not using them to compare performance, and keep my writing and thinking skills good 😄