Last month, Search Engine Watch reported the merger of Microsoft Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer. Bing recently announced new features to its Webmaster Tools that will show traffic stats from Yahoo directly in the Webmaster Tools reports.
While this move appears to be the start of integration, Duane Forrester, senior program manager for Bing Webmaster Tools, suggests it's not really the start of something new, per se.
"Data integration is important because it gives you a true sense of what Bing is serving and where you are being served by Bing," Forrester told Search Engine Watch during SES San Francisco last week. "Whether it's on Bing or Yahoo, it's all Bing and this is why we're doing this."
To see this new, integrated data, click the Traffic Summary Report or Page Traffic report under the Traffic Tab. The reported data for impressions, clicks, and click-through rates (CTR) will be affected.
Because of the combined traffic data from both Bing and Yahoo properties, impressions and clicks will both appear to go up. CTR will change as appropriate, based on the clicks and impressions, since they are a ratio of each other.
The data integration began August 12 and took until August 16 to completely populate to accounts. For now, the data will only be shown combined. Site owners will not (yet) be able to select individual properties to view the data separately.
This looks like the beginning of the end for Yahoo Site Explorer. While Bing won’t comment on Yahoo tools, Forrester offers hope for site owners who are looking to start transitioning away from Site Explorer before it goes away: "we've got you covered."
On a related note, Yahoo’s search results are now being powered by Bing in seven more countries. Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Russia, the Netherlands, Sweden have joined the growing list. Additionally, Bing will power Yahoo Maktoob in “several” Arabic-speaking countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
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