Google and Bing Beef up Webmaster Tools

 In what seems to be a never ending raft of improvements to Bing, even the behind the scenes features of Microsoft's blossoming search engine aren't exempt from swathes of updates.

Speaking at Search Marketing Expo East, Bing's Webmaster Centre team announced new features will include link report functionality and Link Explorer.

Link report – which allows account holders to track links gained and lost over time – makes a welcome return to the Bing Webmaster armoury following its removal after the engine's most recent relaunch.

While indepth overviews of both new tools have yet to surface following yesterday's launch, Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land reported on the event and gave a brief overview of the new tools:

“The new link report shows you where the links came from and you can even export them.

“They also added a feature called Link Explorer which shows you what Bing sees in terms of how they crawl your site.

“You can see additional details about all your URLs, you can request Bing to recrawl them and even block them.”

Not ones to be left out, Google also updated the features on its query reports with percent change and position change data now available in Webmaster Tools.

Presented in Google's typically no frills, straight forward style, percent and rank change allow you to track variations over time via a barrage of green and red arrows as well as lots of lovely percentages – perfect for precision reporting or accurately tracking specific change over chosen time frames.