Bing Webmaster Tools now gives you competitive link data

Bing announced it pushed out a new feature for its backlinks tool within Bing Webmaster Tools. The new feature is named “similar sites” and it lets you compare your site’s backlinks to another site.

How do you access it. To access this, login to Bing Webmaster Tools, click on Backlinks and then on the “similar sites” tab. You can also go directly to it by clicking here.

What it looks like. Here is a screen shot of my site, seroundtable.com which I have verified access to in Bing Webmaster Tools. I am now comparing it with this site, which I do not have verified access to within Bing Webmaster Tools.

Competitive data. It is a bit surprising that Bing is providing competitive data without verified access within Bing Webmaster Tools. The old Yahoo Site Explorer did this, but it closed down in 2011. Bing relaunched the tool, which did have competitive link data for a period of time, but shortly later retired the link explorer tool.

So now we have a free tool from a search engine that gives you backlink data on your competitors.

Why we care. There are many link tools in the SEO space, but here is one directly from a search engine that not only gives you your site’s link data; like Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools has always provided. But now Bing can show you link data of sites you do not have verified access to.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.