Google Search Console vs Bing Webmaster Tools: Which to Use and How to Combine Them

You need both if you care about search traffic, and you should not blend their numbers into one. A short guide to what is comparable and what is not.

Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are each search engine's free dashboard for your site. Both show clicks, impressions, queries, pages and crawling, but they differ in what the totals count, how often the data updates, how much history they keep, and how position is reported. Use both if Bing matters to your traffic, report them as separate lines, and combine only what is additive: clicks, yes; CTR and average position, no. This guide covers the differences that change how you report, and how Quiriz reads each tool.

The differences that change a report

Nothing in this table means one tool is better. Each is built around its own engine's data. The practical consequence is that you cannot treat a Bing number as a Google number with a smaller scale.

When you need both

Start with who finds your site. A software company selling to businesses on managed Windows devices may see a higher Bing share than a site selling to consumers on phones. You can tell from your analytics: look at the organic search sources in GA4 and see what share is Bing. If it is a few percent, the case for Bing is mostly the second crawler's diagnostics. A crawl problem often shows in both tools, and whichever reports first gives you a head start.

Setup is cheap. Bing Webmaster Tools can import a site you have verified in Google Search Console. After that, the difference is the habit of looking, which is where a connected report helps.

Combining the two without double counting

Treat the engines as separate rows of one table. An illustration with made-up numbers for one month:

Clicks sum to 20,700, impressions to 690,000, and the combined CTR comes from those totals. Average position is the one number you do not combine: Google position and Bing position come from different result pages, so report each in its own row and say which engine you mean. Compare each engine's trend with its own previous period and its own last year. For the Google side, the SEO report template is the base, and Bing is a section in it.

Questions each tool answers better

Use Search Console when the question is about Google ranking detail: which pages lost clicks, which queries have impressions but a weak CTR, how a page moved after a change. Its history and its dimensions are deeper. Use Bing Webmaster Tools when the question is about the second crawler: whether Bing can reach your pages, how many it has indexed, whether a spike of 4xx or 5xx responses started on a particular day. The crawl data is also the part of Bing's tool with no direct twin in the numbers Quiriz reads from Google, so it is worth a monthly look even when Bing's traffic is small.

Traps when reading them together

• A definition step in Bing. Compare Bing years carefully around March 24, 2023, when totals started counting more result types.
• Different freshness. A Google dip in the last few days may fill in; Bing queries and pages may simply not have updated yet.
• The sum is not the audience. Total clicks across two engines are not unique visitors, and they will not match analytics sessions.
• History is not symmetrical. Google gives you 16 months; Bing gives what it still holds, so a Bing year-over-year comparison needs history you saved.

How Quiriz handles both

Quiriz is an AI business analyst with connectors for both tools. The Google Search Console connector is read-only, refreshes daily, and is included in paid plans. The Bing Webmaster Tools connector uses an API key you paste from Bing's Settings page; it is in beta, read-only, and also refreshes daily. Each has its own datasets: [Search Console] Daily performance, Queries by month and Pages by month; [Bing] Daily performance, Queries by week, Pages by week and Crawl stats by day.

Metrics are defined once per source, with CTR and average position computed from summed clicks, impressions and position-weighted impressions. Quiriz keeps every Bing day and week it has seen, up to 25 months, so the Bing history problem shrinks over time. Ask the same question of each source and read the answers side by side:

• How did our Google search clicks and impressions change each month this year? and How did our Bing clicks and impressions change each week this year?
• Which queries have many impressions but a low click-through rate? and Which queries have many Bing impressions but few clicks?

Those are two questions, not one blended calculation. Quiriz does not average the two engines' positions, and an admin can define a combined search clicks metric once in Company Context so the team reports it the same way. For the Bing side in detail see Bing Webmaster Tools reporting and the report-by-report translation.

Limits

Both connectors read top queries and pages only, not the long tail. Neither has a query-by-page view in the data Quiriz reads. Bing data from before you connected is only what Bing still held. And neither tool tells you why a number moved.

Frequently asked questions