May 7, 2013 at 11:37am ET by John E Lincoln

When you begin to get into multilingual and multiregional SEO, you know that you have taken a step forward as an SEO expert. Why? Well, because you are probably dealing with a large, complex site that demands the expertise of someone who knows what they are talking about. If you are dealing in multilingual or multinational SEO, then you are managing a complex website strategy that serves multiple locations and languages -- not just one. Lucky for you, most everything you need to know about multilingual and multiregional SEO is listed in this post. So, even if you are a first-timer, you now [...]

Study: Top Reason A User Would Block A Site From A Search? Too Many Ads

Apr 15, 2013 at 1:42pm ET by Amy Gesenhues

An online survey examining SEO assumptions by SurveyMonkey found that the No. 1 reason users would block a website from their search results was if the website contained too many ads. If given an option to remove a website from future search results, 68 percent of the respondents said they would block a website because it had too many ads, while 60 percent claimed they would block a site because of poor quality content. Respondents were more forgiving of typos and grammar mistakes, with 26 percent claiming to block a website with typos and only 23 percent blocking a website containing bad g [...]

Study: Many Searchers Choose Google Over Bing Even When Google’s Name Is On Bing’s Results

Apr 15, 2013 at 1:24pm ET by Amy Gesenhues

In a recent study by SurveyMonkey examining SEO assumptions, respondents were given two search result pages, one with a page header labeled "Google" and the other with a page header labeled "Bing," and asked which page of results they preferred. Even when the page header labels were swapped, more users preferred the Google search results. Of 641 survey respondents, 379 participants received a survey asking which of two search result pages they preferred. One page of results for the term "file taxes" included true Google results and the other page included true Bing results. The Google page [...]

Bing Offers Recommendations for SEO-Friendly AJAX: Suggests HTML5 pushState

Mar 25, 2013 at 10:12pm ET by Vanessa Fox

Bing has announced support for HTML5 pushState as a way to implement AJAX on a site in a way that enables Bing to crawl and index the URLs and content. As Google has supported this implementation since early 2012, site owners finally have an AJAX option that can be crawled and indexed by both major search engines in the United States. (The ease of implementing is another story altogether.) Bing tells me that while they still support the #! version of crawlable AJAX originally launched by Google, they're finding it's not implemented correctly much of the time, and they strongly recommend pus [...]

SMX West: The Search Police Video With Google’s Matt Cutts & Bing’s Duane Forrester

Mar 20, 2013 at 9:47am ET by Barry Schwartz

One of the highlights from the SMX West show a week ago was the session named "The Search Police: Matt & Duane's Excellent Search Engine Adventure." The panel featured Google's Matt Cutts and Bing's Duane Forrester as Bill & Ted with Danny Sullivan playing Rufus. Matt (Bill) and Duane (Ted) both give presentations and then answer questions from the attendees. Here is the full video: There were a lot of nuggets that came out of this video, from the next Penguin and Panda updates to link networks being discredited and penalized to a discussion of whether the PageRank indicat [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Microsoft: Bing SEO

New: Bing Sitemap Plugin Helps Webmasters Create XML Sitemap Files

Feb 21, 2013 at 8:57am ET by Barry Schwartz

Bing announced, on its Bing Webmaster Blog, a new feature that helps webmasters create two types of XML Sitemaps. Bing created a server-side application that works on both IIS and Apache servers that helps you create a comprehensive Sitemap and, also, a recently updated Sitemap. The binaries can be downloaded at the Microsoft download site. How do the two Sitemap files differ? The first is a comprehensive Sitemap of all URLs seen in server traffic, and the second is a Sitemap dedicated to store URLs that have changed recently. Duane Forrester explained: Having both comprehensive an [...]

Bing Tags Expands, Makes Pages Linked To Your Profile Public

Jan 22, 2013 at 1:52pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Search engines continue to go old school, encouraging people to "tag" content in a way that makes it feel like it's 1999 all over again. Today, Bing makes another push in that direction, making content you tag with "Bing Tags" more visibile. Honestly, I feel like this tagging crazy is simply Google and Bing falling down on the job. It used to be that we praised search engines for moving away from the tagging that was popular with them in the mid-to-late 1990s. That's because they were getting smart enough to know that every word on a page was effectively a tag rather than forcing human bein [...]

US Senate Committee Asks Google, Yahoo & Bing To Fight Bait-And-Switch Moving Scams

Sep 26, 2012 at 12:00am ET by Danny Sullivan

The US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation has written to the major US search engines of Google, Yahoo and Bing asking them to examine how some moving services are using "bait-and-switch" tactics on customers who find them through search results. Moving Ripoffs Each search engine received the same letter, covering how a committee investigation found that consumers are doing searches for topics relating to moving services and encountering companies with names that seem similar to large, reputable brands. Consumers pay what they believe to be a moving deposit but [...]

SERPs.com Google & Bing “Weather Report” Tool

Sep 6, 2012 at 4:18pm ET by Barry Schwartz

SERPs.com has quietly launched a SERPs Volatility Index, which aims to work like the MozCast tool to track search results fluctuations and help webmasters know if there was an algorithm update at Google and Bing. While MozCast only tracks Google, SERPs.com tracks both Google and Bing. SERPs.com also shows a 30-day and 90-day volatility charge. It works a lot like the MozCast solution in that it tracks the top keywords for 1,000 popular websites on Google and Bing, adding up to tens of thousands of keywords being tracked. The tool is also updated daily. Here are static screen captures [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Microsoft: Bing SEO | SEM Tools

The Difference In Keyword Research For SEO vs. PPC

Aug 28, 2012 at 11:11am ET by Jenny Halasz

Often when I complete a keyword research project for a client, they ask me about keywords I may not have included, or they want to know what the relative competition on the keywords looks like. This happens often enough that I thought I would remind everyone that while research for SEO and PPC can go hand in hand, they’re actually very different. First, think about what your goals are with each medium. What are you trying to do, and what constitutes success in that area? Next, think about how the keywords will be used. Where, when, how often? Finally, consider what your margin for erro [...]

Bing Webmaster Tools Reports Adds Percentage Changes

Aug 23, 2012 at 1:19pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Bing has added percent changes, deltas, to some of the various reports within Bing Webmaster Tools. The percent changes show the difference from the period selected to the same time period before that. So if you selected the past 30-days, Bing will show the percent change from the previous 30-day period. This applies for Clicks from search, Appeared in search, Pages crawled, Crawl errors and Pages indexed. Specifically for the pages indexed, Bing will show you the percentage change between the last day of the selected period and the last day of the prior period. Bing will also show t [...]

Yes, Bing Has Human Search Quality Raters & Here’s How They Judge Web Pages

Aug 15, 2012 at 9:16am ET by Matt McGee

A web page that definitively satisfies a searcher's intent is "Perfect," and should appear at the top of Bing's search results. On the other end of the scale, spammy web pages and pages that almost no searcher would find useful are deemed "Bad." That's a bit of how Bing instructs the people in its Human Relevance System (HRS) project to grade web pages. It's explained in a 52-page document that Bing calls the "HRS Judging Guidelines." The HRS project is similar to the Quality Rater program that Google uses. Microsoft's version has been around in some form since shortly after MSN Search b [...]

Bing Launches Way to “Disavow” Links, But Why?

Jun 29, 2012 at 1:58am ET by Vanessa Fox

For years, Google's webmaster guidelines have noted that attempts to manipulate Google's algorithms with artificial external link profiles (paid links, link schemes and the like) are violations and that Google may take action (by removing the site from the index or lowering its ranking). This year, Google starting alerting site owners with "unnatural links", recommending that they remove them. Google also launched a new algorithm called Penguin, aimed at flagging sites that attempt to manipulate Google's guidelines with spam techniques such as artificial link profiles. One of the recommen [...]

Bing Offers Advice On Google’s Penguin Update: Diversify

May 21, 2012 at 9:40am ET by Barry Schwartz

Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft Bing, wrote a blog post on the Bing Search blog named Penguins & Pandas Poetry. The post is about Google's latest Penguin update and how SEOs and webmasters need to be better prepared for such updates. The basic advice is simple, SEOs and webmasters need to do one thing - diversify. Duane is not just saying, focus on Bing and make sure your site does well there too. Yes, if you lose all your Google traffic, ranking well in Bing is nice but since Bing only has about 30% marketshare, you are still missing out on a lot of traffic. [...]

No, Bing Doesn’t Support Pagination Attributes to Consolidate Pages In A Series

Apr 19, 2012 at 2:47pm ET by Vanessa Fox

Last week, the Bing Webmaster blog published a post about how Bing handles rel="next" and rel="prev" attributes. On the surface, it seemed as though Bing was announcing that it now supported these tags in the same way Google does. Last September, Google announced support of the rel="prev" and rel="next" attributes to designate paginated content, which enables site owners to cluster multiple pages of content into single entities so that indexing and other values can be consolidated. However, the conclusion of the post included the following, which didn't align with Google's treatment of [...]

How The Bing Toolbar May Accidentally Submit Private Pages & Ads

Apr 9, 2012 at 12:22pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Microsoft has confirmed that they do discover and index URLs that they find through users surfing the Internet with the Bing Toolbar installed. This can be a concern for those who know certain URLs are only accessible if the individual knows about it and navigates to the URL with the Bing Toolbar installed. For example, YouTube has a setting where you can share a video privately with someone else by giving them a special URL. If the user they are sharing that URL with has the Bing Toolbar installed, Bing can technically discover the URL, assuming the page is not blocked via the NOINDEX [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Microsoft: Bing SEO | Top News

How Microsoft Removes “Junk” From Bing Search Results

Mar 20, 2012 at 10:25am ET by Barry Schwartz

Dr. Richard Qian from Bing's core search team wrote a blog post on the Bing Search blog named Bing Search Quality Insights: Reducing Junk. This is part of Bing's ongoing effort to provide search quality insights on how Bing works. Bing here explains how they handle removing bad links from the Bing search results, and also have they handle junky or empty snippets. Junk links include: Dead Links Soft 404 Parked Domains Junk or Empty Snippets include: Junky Snippets Empty Snippets Dead link examples are pages that return a 4xx or 5xx error code is returned from an HTTP r [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing SEO | Top News

Keeping Up With Google: Bing Launches New “Search Quality Insights” Series

Mar 5, 2012 at 1:55pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Want to understand better how Bing creates its search results? Bing has announced a new "Search Quality Insights" series to provide a more behind-the-scenes look at its search engine. You know, like "Search Quality Highlights" series that Google launched last December. What's going on with these? And how does Bing's latest post help Google on anti-trust grounds? Google Seeks Transparency In Google's case, I view the Search Quality Highlights series as Google trying to deal with accusations, especially by those on the anti-trust front but even from places like the New York Times, that Google [...]

Bing Webmaster Tools Adds Markup Validator

Feb 6, 2012 at 9:35am ET by Barry Schwartz

The Bing Webmaster Blog announced they have added a new feature to the crawl section named Markup Validator. To access this new feature, login to Bing Webmaster Tools and click on the "Crawl" tab. Then on the right side or bottom left side there is an option to click on "Markup Validator." Duane from Bing said that while not all code validation issues have an impact on your web page from loading or rankings, "having the syntax incorrect can affect our ability to use the data as you intend." The tool scans for: HTML Microdata Microformats RDFa Schema.org Open Graph Her [...]

Google & Bing Have “Won A Major Victory” Over Content Farms, Study Says

Dec 16, 2011 at 3:41pm ET by Matt McGee

Search engines have "won a major victory" in their battle against so-called content farms. So says the current issue of New Scientist magazine, in an article that's also available online. New Scientist asked University of Glasgow computer scientist Richard McCreadie to study 50 search queries that are "known to be a target of content farmers." One example query given is "how to train for a marathon." McCreadie studied those queries in both March and August, and the magazine says "the results show that Google and Microsoft have won a major victory" against content farms. The results are s [...]

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