It has been a good few days since I last looked at Bing’s Webmaster Tools. That isn’t really newsworthy, but what is interesting are the changes since that last look. The most notable one is that there’s no backlink data any more.

To be honest I never paid that much attention to it, Yahoo!’s Site Explorer and Majestic SEO cover that one quite nicely thanks. Now, seeing as Bing have ditched their backlink info, and they are getting all friendly with Yahoo!, will Site Explorer information make an appearance in it’s place?

On another note, while logged in I noticed this – When clicking on Help, the /support/Dashboard page opened just fine, but my login ID in the top right had changed, no longer was I Atelier, I had transformed into someone from Tehran, then after a refresh I became “ian”:

Luckily for “ian” and “s.sharifi” none of their data was available to be compromised- if it had been I would be in touch with Bing right now, the point is that this is a credibility issue for Bing- at least with me it is.

Another item worthy of note is that to get the best from the Bing tools you need have Silverlight installed. Compared with installing Flash or Shockwave for example the Siverlight install is a pain- 8 steps if I’ve counted right.

Overall my Microsoft internet experience today has not been great, which is a bit of shame in a world where Google currently has no real opposition.

UPDATE

I’m not alone in my disappointment, see Vanessa Fox over at Search Engine Land and Barry Schwartz (rustybrick) at Search Engine Roundtable

Also, Bing now thinks I am “IPIN” from Spain: