While we’ll be the first to admit that it’s Google we talk about most frequently when it comes to search engines (with around an 91% share of the market, it’s not hard to see why), there are, of course, others available. The most notable competitor of Google is Bing, Microsoft’s very own search engine.
With different search engines comes different analytics platforms, which are designed to track the performance of your website so that you can see where improvements can be made.
In this article, we’ll explore how Google’s analytics platform compares to Bing’s, what they bring to the table, and whether you should be using both.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics was originally launched in 2005 and is a free, web-based platform on which you can track your website’s performance; your website’s traffic in particular. The stats that it generates give you insight into how users find your website, their location, how they interact with it, how long they stay there, how your blog pages are performing and what drives conversions on the pages that matter.
Those familiar with Google Analytics may already know all about a significant change that took place in 2023. This saw Google’s Analytics platform transform from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), and it rocked the world of marketers and website owners alike.
This change was driven by privacy, and saw huge layout changes within the platform, it put emphasis on events and engagement over conversions, and the priority of bounce rate was changed. These are amongst some of the changes that felt very big, even for the most adept Universal Analytics user!
What is Bing Webmaster Tools?
Similarly, Bing Webmaster Tools is a free online platform designed to help website owners monitor their performance, this time on Bing. Since 2009, it has sought to help webmasters improve SEO on the search engine, providing a good understanding of their website’s organic visibility and metrics such as click-through rates.
One of Bing’s most notable features is its sitemap function, which allows website owners to submit sitemaps, therefore telling the search engine what pages are important, and which ones they should therefore rank. Crawl errors can also be flagged, so that you can rectify any problems that Bing is having with crawling your site. This can't be done in GA4 but is done via Google Search Console.
Why are these platforms important?
Working blind in marketing is never advised, and SEO is a corner of your strategy that should be based on cold hard evidence. Insights into audience behaviour can arm you with the tools you should be using to better serve their needs, and therefore convert them from browsers into customers.
By working with the search engine’s own analytics platforms, you can gain an understanding of how your audience currently interacts with your site directly from that platform, and therefore highlight ways to improve their experience.
What are the unique features of these analytics platforms?
Google Analytics specialities
Tracking website user traffic and the behaviour of those users while they’re there is the main draw of GA. This sits alongside advanced goal tracking, which proves instrumental to e-commerce businesses in particular, and user’s location and device data.
Bing Webmaster Tools specialities
The dashboard style of Bing’s Webmaster Tools is something its users love, not least because it lets you see the number of indexed pages and incoming links, plus the search queries used for the website’s pages to appear on Bing at a glance. The sitemap feature is also worth mentioning again, as is Link Explorer, and Mobile Friendliness.
What is the difference between Google Analytics and Bing Webmaster Tools?
As you will now know, there are subtle features within both platforms that differentiate them, but the main difference is the search engine they’re gathering information from; each uses its own data. Bing Webmaster Tools is much closer in its structure and function to Google Search Console than Google Analytics.
Should you be using Google Analytics alongside Bing webmaster Tools?
Whilst we’d argue that the analytics platform that uses data from the search engine with the biggest market share (i.e. Google Analytics) is the priority, there’s no harm at all in using both. In fact, being across all your data can only be a good thing for covering your bases and ensuring you’re being found at every opportunity.
Regardless of where users are finding you, the main aim of the game is to provide them with the best experience, and using the analytics platforms of two of the main search engines is a good place to start understanding how to do exactly that.
Need help with your website data?
If you struggle to get your head around your website’s analytics, but you know it holds the key to further online success, we’d like to offer our help. At 427 Marketing, we love to get stuck into the graphs and the numbers, working out where your site needs optimisation to flourish wherever your users choose to find you.
Each month, our clients receive a report to let them know where their website is currently at in terms of performance, what we’ve done to achieve it, and what we’re going to do based on these insights. We use platforms like the ones we’ve talked about to do it!
Data drives our SEO activities, as it should, and these activities aim for the top spots on Google for searches relevant to what you do. Sounds good? Kickstart your year in business by investing in good SEO - drop us a line today.