Tag: Bing AI

  • Bing Webmaster Tools vs Google Search Console: What Each Tells You (and the 84% Lesson)

    Here’s the number that reorganized how we think about search: ~84% of our organic traffic comes from Bing. Not Google. Bing — and the Copilot and ChatGPT surfaces that draw on Bing’s index. Yet for a long time, like nearly everyone, we watched only Google Search Console and treated Bing as an afterthought.

    That’s the blind spot this article is about. Short answer: use both consoles, but if Bing drives your traffic, stop treating Bing Webmaster Tools as optional — it has data, indexing controls, and an AI-insights surface that Google Search Console doesn’t, and it’s reporting on the search engine that’s actually sending you readers.

    This is the side-by-side from running both consoles on the same media property: what each one tells you, where Bing is quietly ahead, and how we wired the Bing Webmaster Tools API into our editorial calendar.

    The core reporting — query, position, CTR

    At the surface, the two consoles look like twins. Both give you queries, impressions, clicks, average position, and CTR. The differences are in coverage and freshness.

    How we do it

    Job Bing Webmaster Tools Google Search Console Verdict
    Query / position / CTR Yes, per query and page Yes, per query and page Tie on the basics
    Data freshness Often faster to update ~2-3 day lag Bing edges ahead
    Historical window Generous 16 months Toss-up
    API access Full API: position + CTR per query/page Search Analytics API Bing — the API is the underrated weapon
    AI / Copilot insights Dedicated AI-traffic insights No equivalent surface yet Bing, clearly
    Market it reports on Bing + Copilot + ChatGPT-via-Bing Google only Depends on your traffic mix

    The honest read: for the basic dashboard, they’re close enough that you’d never switch for the UI. The reasons to take Bing seriously are whose traffic it reports on and what it lets you do about it — the AI insights tab and the API.

    Indexing: IndexNow vs crawl-when-it-feels-like-it

    This is the most concrete operational difference, and it’s lopsided.

    How we do it

    Job Bing Webmaster Tools Google Search Console Verdict
    Tell it about a new URL IndexNow — push, indexed near-instantly URL Inspection → “Request indexing” (queued) Bing — push beats poll
    Bulk submission IndexNow ping + sitemap Sitemap, then wait Bing
    Control over crawl Crawl control, block/allow Limited crawl controls Bing — more knobs
    Re-crawl on edit Re-ping IndexNow Hope, or re-request Bing

    IndexNow is the standout. Instead of submitting a sitemap and waiting for a crawler to wander by, you push a URL the moment it changes and it’s picked up almost immediately — and because IndexNow is a shared protocol, one ping notifies participating engines. Google’s model is still largely “request indexing and wait.” For a content site that publishes and edits constantly, push beats poll every time. We ping IndexNow on publish and on every meaningful edit.

    The AI / Copilot insights tab

    Google Search Console has no real equivalent here yet. Bing Webmaster Tools surfaces AI-traffic insights — visibility into how your content shows up across Bing’s AI-powered and Copilot surfaces. Given that those surfaces (and ChatGPT’s web results, which draw on Bing) are an increasing share of how people find answers, this is the single console feature most aligned with where discovery is heading. If you care about GEO at all, it’s the dashboard that tells you whether the AI assistants are actually pulling you in.

    Wiring the BWT API into the editorial calendar

    The Bing Webmaster Tools API is the part most sites never touch, and it’s the most actionable. It returns position and CTR per query and per page — which is a ready-made content-optimization loop:

    1. Pull query/position/CTR from the BWT API on a schedule.
    2. Find pages ranking on page one with weak CTR (good position, bad headline/meta) — fast wins.
    3. Find queries where we rank position 5-15 with real impressions — the “one good edit from page one” list.
    4. Feed both lists straight into the editorial calendar as prioritized rewrites.

    Because Bing drives most of our traffic, this loop is pointed at the engine that actually moves our numbers. Running the same loop off Google Search Console’s API would optimize for the 16% of traffic, not the 84%.

    What surprised us

    • Bing’s data is often fresher than Google’s. We frequently see new queries in Bing Webmaster Tools before they show up in Search Console.
    • IndexNow is faster than anything Google offers — and it’s free and standard. The gap between “push and it’s indexed” and “request and wait” is real and daily.
    • The AI insights tab has no GSC counterpart. For a site doing GEO, that’s the most forward-looking surface either console offers.
    • Almost nobody verifies their site in Bing Webmaster Tools. You can import directly from Google Search Console in a couple of clicks, so the only reason most sites skip it is that they’ve never looked at where their traffic comes from.

    The takeaway

    This was never a “pick one” — it’s “stop ignoring one.” Google Search Console is still essential; Google isn’t going anywhere. But running only GSC is a bet that Google’s view of your site is the only one that matters, and our traffic data says that bet is wrong by a factor of five.

    Use both. Watch Google Search Console for the Google slice. But if a large share of your organic traffic comes from Bing — and a surprising number of content sites are in exactly that position without checking — then Bing Webmaster Tools is your primary console: fresher data, IndexNow for instant indexing, the AI/Copilot insights surface, and an API you can wire straight into your editorial calendar.

    The 84% lesson is simple: measure where your readers actually come from, then watch the console that reports on it. For us, that meant promoting Bing from afterthought to the dashboard we open first.

    This is part of our “Two Clouds, One Site” series — we run the same media property on Azure and Google Cloud, on the free tiers, and report what watching both ecosystems actually teaches us. The lab lives on tygart.media; the findings publish here.

    Frequently asked questions

    Should I use Bing Webmaster Tools if I already use Google Search Console?
    Yes — they report on different search engines, so using only Google Search Console hides all of your Bing performance. If any meaningful share of your traffic comes from Bing, Copilot, or ChatGPT’s Bing-powered results, Bing Webmaster Tools shows data and offers indexing controls that Search Console doesn’t. You can import your site from Search Console in a couple of clicks.

    What is IndexNow and is it faster than Google indexing?
    IndexNow is a protocol that lets you push a URL to search engines the moment it’s published or changed, instead of waiting for a crawler. It’s typically much faster than Google’s “request indexing and wait” model, and because it’s a shared standard, one ping notifies participating engines. For sites that publish or edit frequently, it’s a meaningful indexing-speed advantage.

    Does Bing Webmaster Tools have an API?
    Yes. The Bing Webmaster Tools API exposes per-query and per-page data including position and CTR, plus URL submission. That makes it practical to pull your search performance on a schedule and feed it into a content-optimization loop — for example, flagging page-one results with weak CTR or near-miss rankings to prioritize for rewrites.

    What does the Bing Webmaster Tools AI insights tab show?
    It surfaces how your content appears across Bing’s AI-powered and Copilot surfaces, giving visibility into AI-driven discovery that Google Search Console has no direct equivalent for yet. For sites focused on Generative Engine Optimization, it’s the most forward-looking view either console offers into whether AI assistants are pulling in your content.

    Why would a site get most of its traffic from Bing instead of Google?
    It’s more common than people assume, especially for niche or B2B content, sites strong in Bing-heavy regions or browsers, and content that surfaces well in Copilot and ChatGPT’s Bing-powered results. The lesson is to measure your actual referral mix rather than assume Google dominates — many sites only discover their Bing share once they verify in Bing Webmaster Tools.

  • Microsoft’s Everything App: Is Copilot Building the Unified AI Dashboard Nobody Asked For (But Everyone Needs)?

    Microsoft’s Everything App: Is Copilot Building the Unified AI Dashboard Nobody Asked For (But Everyone Needs)?

    What if every email, calendar event, LinkedIn notification, health metric, automation log, and business dashboard you care about lived on one page — organized by AI, updated in real time, and actually useful? That’s not a fever dream. It may already be Microsoft’s plan. And if it isn’t, someone needs to build it fast.

    Definition: The “Everything App” A unified AI-powered platform that aggregates professional data, communications, scheduling, automation outputs, and personal metrics into a single intelligent interface — personalized per user and powered by connected APIs.

    The Observation That Started This

    A few days ago I noticed something odd: LinkedIn posts I was publishing were reformatting into blocks of plain text instead of keeping their intended structure. My own agents couldn’t scrape LinkedIn the way I wanted them to. Anti-AI friction was everywhere on the platform.

    Then it hit me: Microsoft owns LinkedIn. Microsoft owns Bing. Microsoft is betting billions on Copilot. What if the formatting weirdness, the scraping blocks, the structured data changes — what if those aren’t bugs? What if they’re features in a Beta program for AI information ingestion?

    Think about it differently. Imagine a Bing page — or a Copilot interface — that pulls in curated LinkedIn posts, your email threads, your calendar, your business process updates, your health watch data, your cloud automations, and your news feed. All of it, organized the way you think about your day. That’s not a stretch. That might be exactly where this is heading.

    Microsoft Is Already Building the Pieces

    Let’s be clear about what Microsoft has actually shipped and announced, because the pieces of this puzzle are already on the table.

    Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 3 launched in early 2026 alongside Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite (generally available May 1, 2026). It combines productivity, identity, Copilot AI, and Agent 365 — a control plane for governing and scaling AI agents across an organization. The Agent 365 dashboard shows connections between agents, people, and data in real time. That’s not a search box. That’s an operational view of your entire professional world.

    Microsoft Graph is the connective tissue. It links LinkedIn professional data — profiles, company updates, job changes, content signals — directly into Copilot’s intelligence layer. When enterprise users ask Copilot about industry experts or companies, LinkedIn data feeds the answer. The integration is deeper than most people realize, and it’s been quietly expanding since Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in 2016.

    Bing web cards in Copilot Chat now deliver rich, expandable information cards for weather, stocks, sports, news, and more. It’s a small feature on paper. But it signals the visual direction: Copilot as a personalized front page, not a search box.

    The new Agenda view in Windows — announced at Ignite 2025 — shows a chronological list of upcoming events unified with Calendar, surfaced directly in the Notification Center. Microsoft is literally building a unified daily view into the operating system itself.

    Why the Western Super App Never Happened — Until Now

    WeChat has over 1.3 billion monthly active users and handles messaging, payments, e-commerce, government services, and mini-programs all in one place. Western companies have been trying and failing to replicate that for a decade.

    The reasons for failure are real: U.S. data privacy law, antitrust scrutiny, platform fragmentation, and deeply entrenched single-purpose apps (Slack for chat, Stripe for payments, Google Calendar for scheduling) made the super app strategy a dead end in the West.

    But AI changes the calculus. The old super app required you to rebuild every vertical inside one app. The new super app just needs one AI brain that can use everything outside it. You don’t need to own payments — you need Copilot to understand your Stripe data. You don’t need to own scheduling — you need Copilot to read your Google Calendar and act on it.

    As one analysis of the U.S. super app window put it: “The old super app was ‘one app with everything inside.’ The next super app might be ‘one AI brain that can use everything outside.’” Between 2025 and 2027, the U.S. enters what some analysts call its Super App window — a convergence of AI interfaces, behavioral compression, and digital sovereignty that’s distinctly Western in character.

    Microsoft is the only Western company with the asset stack to pull this off: an OS (Windows), a browser (Edge), a search engine (Bing), a professional network (LinkedIn), a productivity suite (Microsoft 365), a developer platform (GitHub + Azure), and now a unified AI layer (Copilot) stitching it all together.

    What the “Everything Page” Actually Looks Like

    Here’s the vision, stated plainly:

    • Your news — curated by AI based on your industry, interests, and saved searches
    • Your LinkedIn feed — surfaced selectively, not chronologically, based on what actually matters to your business goals
    • Your email digest — key threads, action items, follow-ups, flagged by AI before you even open your inbox
    • Your calendar — not just events, but prep briefs for each meeting pulled from your email, CRM, and LinkedIn history
    • Your automation outputs — Cloud Run jobs, Zapier logs, agent reports, anything your background systems are doing
    • Your health signals — fitness watch data, sleep scores, recovery metrics — not in a separate app, but contextualizing your day
    • Your business metrics — revenue, leads, content performance, wherever your data lives

    All of it on one page. All of it updated in real time. All of it organized by an AI that knows what you consider signal versus noise.

    That’s not sci-fi. The APIs for all of that exist today. The AI to synthesize it exists today. The missing piece is the will to build the page — and a platform with enough trust and install base to make it stick.

    The LinkedIn Angle Nobody Is Talking About

    Here’s where my original observation gets more interesting. Microsoft has spent years sitting on one of the richest professional datasets on earth and doing relatively little with it compared to what’s possible. LinkedIn has 1 billion+ members, decades of career graph data, company relationship maps, content engagement signals — and it feeds directly into Microsoft Graph.

    Now that Copilot is deeply embedded in enterprise environments, LinkedIn data isn’t just a social feature — it’s a professional intelligence layer. When your Copilot brief for a sales call surfaces that your prospect just changed jobs, posted about a pain point, or follows a competitor — that’s LinkedIn data flowing through Microsoft Graph into your daily workflow.

    The scraping friction I noticed? It makes more sense when you consider that Microsoft may be actively working to make LinkedIn data more valuable inside its own ecosystem rather than letting third-party agents extract it freely. They’re not blocking AI — they’re channeling it through Copilot.

    The Risk: Nobody Wants One Company Holding All of This

    It would be dishonest not to acknowledge the obvious counterargument: this is a massive concentration of data and influence in one company’s hands.

    The reason WeChat works in China is partly cultural and partly because the regulatory environment permits it. U.S. antitrust law, GDPR-aligned state privacy rules, and growing public skepticism about big tech data practices all push against a single unified everything app.

    Microsoft’s bet is that enterprise trust — built through compliance features, security architecture, and the corporate IT relationship — gives them the permission that consumer platforms like Meta or X never earned. It’s a reasonable bet. It’s also one that regulators will watch closely.

    If Microsoft Doesn’t Build It, Someone Will

    The technology is not the bottleneck. Any serious developer with access to the right APIs could build a personal everything page today. Connect your Gmail, your LinkedIn (to the extent the API allows), your calendar, your fitness data, your cloud automation logs, and your analytics tools. Build a UI that surfaces what matters. Add an AI layer to summarize and prioritize.

    The bottleneck is distribution, trust, and the cold-start problem — nobody wants to connect all their accounts to something they’ve never heard of. That’s why Microsoft wins this race if they choose to run it. They already have the accounts. They already have the trust relationships. Copilot is already installed in hundreds of millions of enterprise seats.

    But if they don’t move fast enough, or if they build it only for enterprise and ignore the small business and creator class — that’s an opening. A focused, privacy-first, SMB-oriented everything page, built on open APIs, with no data lock-in? That’s a product worth building.

    What This Means for Your Content and AI Strategy Right Now

    Whether or not Microsoft delivers the everything app in the next 18 months, the direction of travel is clear. Professional information is consolidating around AI interfaces. LinkedIn content is increasingly flowing into Copilot’s intelligence layer. Bing-based AI answers are pulling from structured, authoritative content.

    For businesses and content creators, that means:

    • Your LinkedIn presence is now AI training data. What you post, how you structure it, and what entities you’re associated with affects how Copilot describes you to enterprise users asking about your industry.
    • Your website content needs to be AI-readable. Structured data, clear entity signals, authoritative citations — these are no longer optional for AI search visibility.
    • Your automation stack is a competitive advantage. The businesses that have already connected their tools via APIs will be first in line when the everything page actually ships.

    The everything app isn’t coming. It’s arriving in pieces, quietly, through products you already use. The question is whether you’re positioned when the pieces snap together.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    Is Microsoft building an “everything app” like WeChat?

    Microsoft hasn’t announced a single “everything app” product, but the pieces — Copilot, Microsoft Graph, LinkedIn data integration, Agent 365, and Bing web cards — suggest a unified AI-powered dashboard is the strategic direction. Whether it arrives as one product or an ecosystem of connected tools remains to be seen.

    Why did Western super apps fail where WeChat succeeded?

    U.S. data privacy regulations, antitrust scrutiny, platform fragmentation, and deeply entrenched single-purpose apps all prevented a WeChat-style super app from emerging in the West. AI changes the equation by enabling one system to connect and synthesize data across many separate apps without needing to own them.

    How does LinkedIn data connect to Microsoft Copilot?

    Microsoft Graph links LinkedIn’s professional data — profiles, company updates, career changes, content signals — directly into Copilot’s intelligence layer. Enterprise Copilot users receive LinkedIn-informed context in sales briefings, meeting prep, and professional research queries.

    What is Microsoft 365 E7 and what does it include?

    Microsoft 365 E7 (The Frontier Suite, GA May 1, 2026) combines Microsoft 365 E5 for secure productivity, Entra Suite for identity and access, Microsoft 365 Copilot for AI-in-workflow, and Agent 365 as the control plane to govern and scale AI agents across an organization.

    What can small businesses do today to prepare for AI-unified platforms?

    Connect your tools via APIs now, optimize your LinkedIn presence for AI entity recognition, publish structured authoritative content for AI search visibility, and build automation stacks that produce clean data outputs — these investments compound in value as AI platforms consolidate professional information.