Bing Webmaster Tools Report Metrics Change

Bing made some changes to their Webmaster Tools Reports helping you see at a glance if things are improving, or not. Now the Bing Webmaster Tools Dashboard will show percent of change as compared to the prior date range of the same length. In our screenshot below, it's set at the default of 30 days, so the report is indicating the percent change between the prior 30 day period and the currently selected 30 day period. That's an overall 60 day period covered in this report.

Previously, the report showed the change between the 1st and last day of the report data range, which was problematic being such a small sample range. This new metric is a good improvement giving you a much better insight into how your traffic and other data is trending.

Bing also added the absolute numbers for the prior and current data range. You should note that for the Pages Indexed value, it is showing you the difference between the first and last day of the date period, NOT a comparison to the previous period.

Webmaster Tools reports allow you to look back into 6 months of data, so for these comparisons, the most you can do is a three month data range which would compare that to the previous three months (six months total). However, you can look at direct reports if you want to inspect say 6 months of data individually .

To get the most out of these reports, you should also take a quick look at the last seven days changes, as that information can be important and not really show well in periods of 30 days worth of data which is the default. Just click the drop down on the top right of the dashboard and take a quick look to make sure you're not missing anything important.