Connecting Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools

An earlier article covered the initial setup of Google Search Console. This one goes deeper on what to do with both tools once they're connected, because most static.app users set them up and then never log back in.

If you check both tools for 10 minutes a week, you'll catch SEO issues months before they become real problems.

Why both tools, not just Google

Google Search Console shows you data about Google Search. Bing Webmaster Tools shows you data about Bing. Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and ChatGPT all use Bing's underlying index, so Bing's data covers more of the web than people assume.

Bing Webmaster Tools also has features Google doesn't: SEO recommendations, keyword research, and a more permissive "submit URLs" feature that lets you push pages to indexing faster.

Connect both. Bing imports from Google Search Console with one click; there's no setup tax.

The Google Search Console reports to actually check

Performance. Shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate, and average position. Filter by query to see what people are searching to find your website. Filter by page to see which pages perform best. Look at week-over-week trends, not day-by-day fluctuations.

Pages (under Indexing). Shows which pages are indexed and which aren't, with the reason for each. The reasons to take action on:

• "Not found (404)" — broken page somewhere on the web is pointing to a missing URL. Either restore the page or set up a redirect.
• "Crawled, currently not indexed" — Google saw the page but chose not to index it. Usually means content is thin or duplicates another page. Improve it.
• "Discovered, currently not indexed" — Google knows about the page but hasn't crawled it yet. Normal for new pages; problematic if it persists for weeks.
• "Blocked by robots.txt" — check that this is intentional.

Sitemaps. Confirms your sitemap is being read and shows how many URLs Google discovered. If "Discovered" is much lower than the actual number of URLs in your sitemap, something is wrong with the file.

Core Web Vitals. Shows real-user performance data over the last 28 days. If pages drop into the "needs improvement" or "poor" buckets, fix them.

Manual Actions. If Google has penalized your website, it'll be here. Most websites never see this, which is the goal. If you do, read the action description carefully and fix the issue before requesting reconsideration.

The Bing Webmaster Tools reports to check

Search Performance. Same idea as Google's, but for Bing.

Website Explorer. Shows every page Bing has crawled, with errors highlighted. Useful for spotting broken pages.

SEO Reports. Bing runs automated SEO audits and lists issues. Most of them duplicate what you'd already know, but it's a useful checklist.

URL Submission. Bing lets you submit up to 10,000 URLs per day for instant indexing (Google rate-limits this much more aggressively). When you publish or significantly update important pages, submit them here.

A weekly rhythm

10 minutes, once a week:

1. Open Search Console. Check Performance. Compare last 28 days to the previous 28 days. Look for big changes.
2. Check the Pages report. Note any new errors or pages that fell out of the index.
3. Check Core Web Vitals. If anything dropped from "good" to "needs improvement," that's a flag.
4. Open Bing Webmaster Tools. Glance at SEO Reports for new issues.
5. Submit any new URLs you published in the last week.

Most weeks this is a one-minute check. Other weeks it'll surface something you needed to know.

Set up email alerts

Both tools can email you when something goes wrong. Turn them on. They'll alert you about:

• Manual actions and security issues
• Significant indexing changes
• Critical Core Web Vitals regressions
• Server downtime that affected crawling

These emails are rare. When they come, they matter. Better to learn about a problem from a notification than from a traffic drop two months later.