Bing SERP reports: the three places Bing ranking data comes from, and how to build a monthly one

There are three sources of Bing search results data and they answer different questions. Bing Webmaster Tools reports what Bing already knows about your own site, in the familiar shape of clicks, impressions, click through rate and average position. A rank tracker set to the Bing engine reports positions for any query you choose, including queries where you do not appear at all, which is the only way to see a competitor's Bing position. The Bing Webmaster API delivers the same site level data to a spreadsheet or a warehouse on a schedule, which is what you want when the report has to be produced every month without anyone logging in. Pick the source from the question, and if you need competitors in the report, you need the tracker.

The three sources at a glance

Source	Answers	Cost	Limit worth knowing
Bing Webmaster Tools	How my pages perform in Bing now	Free with a verified site	Your own site only
Rank tracker set to Bing	Where anyone ranks for a query I choose	Paid, per keyword	Positions are sampled, so set market and device deliberately
Bing Webmaster API	The same site data, automated	Free, needs a key	The old protocols are being retired, see below

What Bing Webmaster Tools gives you for nothing

Verify the site, then open the Search Performance report, which is the Bing equivalent of the performance report in Search Console. Microsoft keeps its own documentation for it in the Bing Webmaster Tools help centre, and the tool itself is introduced on the Bing Webmaster Tools page. If the account side is not set up yet, our walkthrough of Bing Webmaster Center covers verification and what each report is for. In practice you will read it in four passes.

• Queries. Sort by impressions, then look for queries where you have position and no clicks. That gap is usually a title or description problem, and it is the cheapest fix available in any search tool.
• Pages. Compare your top Bing pages against your top Google pages. Where the lists differ sharply, Bing is reading your site differently, and the usual cause is thin internal linking to the pages Bing favours.
• Market and device. Bing's traffic mix by country and by device is often nothing like your Google mix. Filter before you draw a conclusion, because a flat national line can hide one market doubling.
• Change over time. Export monthly. Bing's own retention window is shorter than most teams expect, so a report built only from the live interface eventually loses the comparison you wanted.

The API route, and the date in the calendar

For a report that regenerates itself, the Bing Webmaster API exposes the site data directly. Microsoft's documentation lists the categories it returns: Rank and Traffic Stats, Link Details, Keyword Details and Crawl Stats, along with submission of URLs and sitemaps. The same documentation carries a notice that matters to anyone with an existing integration: "Legacy SOAP and POX APIs will be retired on August 31, 2026. Migrate to our REST APIs to avoid service disruption." If your monthly Bing report is produced by a script somebody wrote years ago, check which protocol it uses before that date rather than after. The reference material sits on Microsoft Learn.

While you are in the API documentation, note that it also handles URL submission, and that IndexNow covers the same job with a single ping that Bing and other participating engines read. For a site that publishes often, that pairing does more for Bing visibility than any report will.

Rank tracking in Bing, set up properly

Most rank trackers can run Bing alongside Google, and the setting is usually one checkbox. Three configuration points decide whether the output is worth reading.

• Market, not just country. Bing serves by market and language pair. A tracker pointed at the wrong market returns positions no customer of yours ever sees.
• Device split. Keep desktop and mobile as separate tracked sets. Bing's desktop share of your traffic is usually higher than Google's, which makes the desktop set the one to watch.
• A control group of queries. Track ten queries that should hold still alongside the ones you are working on. When everything moves at once, you are looking at a Bing update, not your own work.

The general mechanics of position tracking, including what to record besides the number, are covered in our piece on how SERP trackers work. Everything there applies to Bing with the market setting changed.

A monthly Bing report in five rows

Row	Source	The decision it drives
Clicks and impressions, this month against last	Webmaster Tools	Whether Bing deserves more attention at all
Top ten queries by impressions with their click through rate	Webmaster Tools	Which titles and descriptions to rewrite
Pages Bing ranks that Google does not	Webmaster Tools, compared to Search Console	Where to add internal links
Tracked positions, you against three competitors	Rank tracker, Bing market	Which queries are actually contested in Bing
Indexed pages and crawl errors	Webmaster Tools or the API	Whether anything is blocking Bing specifically

Keep the same five rows for a year. The value of a Bing report is almost entirely in the trend, because the absolute numbers are small for most sites and a single month tells you very little.

When Bing deserves a report of its own

Decide from your own analytics rather than a published market share figure. Pull the share of sessions and, more importantly, the share of revenue that arrived from Bing over the last twelve months, split by country and device. Three situations usually justify a standing Bing report: business customers on managed desktop machines where Bing is the default, markets where your own data shows a double digit Bing share, and any site where Microsoft Advertising is a real line in the budget, since organic and paid Bing results share a page. Where Bing is a rounding error in your revenue, fold two rows into the main search report and move on.

Questions about Bing SERP reporting

Can I see competitor rankings in Bing Webmaster Tools?

No. Webmaster Tools reports on sites you have verified, so competitor positions have to come from a rank tracker set to the Bing engine.

Why do Bing positions differ so much from Google positions?

Different index, different ranking systems and a different results layout, so a page that ranks fourth in one can sit on the second page of the other. Treat them as two separate reports rather than expecting one to predict the other.

Is average position in Bing measured the same way as in Search Console?

Close enough to trend, not close enough to compare side by side in a single chart. Keep the two in separate columns and compare each against its own history.

How do I get Bing data into Looker Studio or a spreadsheet?

Either export from the interface each month, use the Webmaster API, or use a connector from a reporting vendor that wraps the API. If you choose a connector, check which protocol it calls, given the retirement date above.

Does ranking in Bing affect anything beyond Bing traffic?

It affects more than it used to. Microsoft's own products read Bing results, so a page Bing has indexed and ranks well is a page available to those surfaces. That is a strong reason to keep the index and crawl rows in the report even when click volume is modest.

How often should the report run?

Monthly for the full set, with a weekly glance at crawl errors and indexed page count during any migration or redesign so a Bing specific block is caught in days.

The Bing surface where position is not the unit

Everything in this report has a position column, because the result being measured is a list of links. Alongside those links, Microsoft now answers plenty of questions in prose, and so do ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude. In a written answer there is no tenth place and no impression to count: either your business is named in the two or three it mentions, or the reader never learns you exist. That is a reporting gap rather than a ranking one, so give it a sixth row: the question asked, the businesses named in the reply, and the page each name came from. AI Knows Us is what fills that row, and the first set of queries costs nothing at aiknowsus.com. Put it under the five above and the monthly pack covers both kinds of Bing result.