Bing SEO
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Bing Revamps Their Webmaster Tools & Launches Partial Yahoo Site Explorer Replacement
Today at SMX Advanced, Bing has launched a revamped version of their webmaster tools product, with a new user interface and improved features. Much of the changes are just sprucing up existing data (showing better summaries/dashboards and the like), but of particular interest to some is the new Link Explorer, which is a partial replacement […]
Bing Offers Advice On Google’s Penguin Update: Diversify
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 […]
No, Bing Doesn’t Support Pagination Attributes to Consolidate Pages In A Series
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 […]
How The Bing Toolbar May Accidentally Submit Private Pages & Ads
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, […]
How Microsoft Removes “Junk” From Bing Search Results
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 […]
Keeping Up With Google: Bing Launches New “Search Quality Insights” Series
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 […]
Bing Webmaster Tools API Now Available
Bing has announced three new features for Bing Webmaster Tools but the biggest new feature to me is the new Bing Webmaster Tools API. Markup Validation Tool. This feature allows webmasters to enter any URL and see what the markup looks like on the page, within the code. Keyword research tool. This tool allows webmasters […]
Bing Webmaster Tools Adds Markup Validator
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 […]
2011: The Year Google & Bing Took Away From SEOs & Publishers
Increasingly over the years, search engines — Google in particular — have given more and more support to SEOs and publishers. But 2011 marked the first significant reversal that I can recall, with both linking and keyword data being withheld. Here’s what happened, why it matters and how publishers can push back if Google and Bing don’t […]
Banned Holiday Deal Sites Return To Bing
Holiday deal sites that Bing banned from its search listings just before the busy shopping days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday have now been allowed to return. They include a site run by the group that created the entire Cyber Monday concept. Banned: Not Your Usual Suspects We reported previously how the sites had […]
Bing Webmaster Tools Expand Crawl Details, Offers URL Normalization Tips & More
Duane Forrester announced on the Bing Search blog a major upgrade to Bing Webmaster Tools. He said this is their biggest update since the Honey Badger update from June. The key updates and changes include: Expanded Crawl Details: This includes showing inbound links for any URL including 300, 400 & 500 codes. Plus URLs listed […]
The Meta Keywords Tag Lives At Bing & Why Only Spammers Should Use It
I was happy. I was joyful. I thought the meta keywords tag had finally died last year. But Bing recently said that it does use it. After some back-and-forth, I can confirm further that it does, but as a signal for finding spammers, not for improving rank. Meta Keywords Tag 101 If you want the […]
Bing Webmaster Tools Integrates Yahoo Traffic Data
Bing Webmaster Tools now has fully integrated in Yahoo’s traffic numbers as well. So if you have seen a spike in your Bing Webmaster Tools traffic charts, this is the reason why. You should see your impressions and clicks data spike up, while the click through rate numbers may fluctuate from the norm as well. […]
Google & Bing (Still) Handle Underscores & Dashes Differently
It’s one of the longest-running SEO questions around, and still something many of us get asked by clients, readers, conference attendees and so forth: Should we use dashes or underscores in our URLs? Google re-opened the discussion recently with a new YouTube video that highlights how Google currently handles dashes and underscores, and also reminds […]
Bing Now Supports Google’s Crawlable AJAX Standard?
In 2009, Google proposed a standard for crawlable AJAX. A few months later, that standard went live and while I thought it was great Google was providing options to content owners to ensure their sites were indexed well, I noted at the time that “this method doesn’t work for search engines other than Google. So […]
Bing’s “Honey Badger” – An Upgrade To Webmaster Tools
This morning at our SMX Advanced conference, Bing’s Stefan Weitz announced “Honey Badger” — Bing’s latest upgrade to its Webmaster Tools. Weitz explained that today’s upgrade primarily involves three things: Crawl setting management: users can ask Bing to crawl a website less during busy times of day and more during off-peak hours Role management: set […]
Bing Webmaster Tools Enables HTML5 Interface
I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable this morning that Bing Webmaster Tools no longer requires Silverlight. Now, if you login to Bing Webmaster Tools without Silverlight installed on your computer, you can see all the reports, graphs and charts that you were unable to see days ago. In July 2010, Bing revamped Webmaster Tools […]
Bing Webmaster Tools Launches New Link Reports; Google Webmaster Tools Changes Theirs
Bing Webmaster Tools has relaunched inbound link reports for verified site owners (as announced at SMX East back in October). I dove in to check out what the new reports include. Google has recently revamped their inbound link reports, so I made note of those changes well. Read on for more details. Want a quick summary? […]
What Social Signals Do Google & Bing Really Count?
Both Google and Bing have added many social search features over the past year. There’s also been talk about using “social signals” to help rank regular search results. But are either of the major search engines actually using those social signals to rank regular search results? A bit, they tell me. In particular, your stature […]
Bing Uses Click Through Rate In Ranking Algorithm
Bing has just confirmed at SMX East that they use click through rate (CTR) in their ranking algorithm. I personally walked over to Steve Tullis, Senior Program Manager Lead, Bing, Microsoft and asked him if he really said they use click through rate in the ranking algorithm. He said, yes we do – but it […]
Bing To Add Link Reports To Webmaster Tools & Google Adds More Data To Query Reports
Yesterday at SMX East the Bing Webmaster Center team announced new features for their Webmaster Tools. The new features include the link report that went missing when they relaunched Bing Webmaster Tools and a feature called Link Explorer. And today, Google quietly added percent change data to the query reports in Webmaster Tools. The new […]
Yahoo-Microsoft Organic Transition Happening, Site Explorer, Search Monkey Holding For Now
The Yahoo-Microsoft search transition is picking up momentum. Yahoo announced a number of things today relevant to the change over. They concern the organic search transition, SearchMonkey and Site Explorer. Yahoo announced that later this week the organic transition will commence for PC and mobile results in North America: This is an important step toward […]
All New Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools
Today, Microsoft launched a revamp of their Bing Webmaster Tools. I talked to them back in June, when they previewed the tools at SMX Advanced, and they told me that they were starting from scratch and rebuilding the tool from the ground up. So how are things different? They say they are focused on three key […]
Search Engine Land’s Guide to Bing SEO
Bing accounts for 26.5% of all desktop searches in the U.S., according to Comscore (April 2021). With the recent prevalence of working from home, people are spending more time on their desktop computers, which might also mean that more people are now using Bing. If you do nothing, then you’re leaving your competitors with the […]
Microsoft To Replace MSNBot With BingBot October 1, 2010
The Bing Search Blog announced that on October 1st, MSNBot will be renamed to BingBot. Bing has been testing a beta bot since November of last year. On October 1st, the beta label will be removed from the Bot name and it will be named BingBot. You should see the following useragent in your log […]
SMX Advanced Session: SEO For Bing Vs. Google
SMX Advanced kicked off this morning in sunny Seattle (yes, seriously) with a packed house for the opening session of the SEO/Social Media track, “SEO for Google vs. Bing: How Different are They?” I won’t be recapping all of the sessions I attend today and tomorrow, but will do my best to share any interesting […]
Bing & Yahoo Soon To Support Canonical Tag
More than a year since the three major search engines united to announce the canonical tag, neither Bing nor Yahoo formally support it. But that could be changing soon. Speaking during the “Ask the Search Engines” session at SMX West on Thursday, reps from both search engines said they’re in the process of supporting rel=canonical […]
Bing Updates Webmaster FAQs
Bing has updated their Webmaster FAQs document. The new PDF download it 28 pages long, 82 questions and answers deep and broken out in 12 categories. The questions and answers are all hyperlinked within the FAQs PDF document. PDF does add a level of readability but why not publish them as a web document as […]
7 Ways To Conquer Natural Search When Google & Bing Face Off In 2010
When it comes to search marketing, the Big Three is about to become the Big Two. The deal heard round the world this past July comes to fruition in 2010—and the much-anticipated partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo! will have significant implications for search engine optimization. Paid search will no doubt face its share of opportunities […]
Bing Admits MSNbot Is Slow
Via Search Engine Roundtable comes news of refreshing candor from a Bing employee about the performance of Bing’s crawler, which is still referred to as MSNbot. The admission happened yesterday in the Bing Webmaster Center forums, when Brett Yount, a program manager for Bing, replied to a question about why Bing has only indexed one […]
Bing Still Working On Canonical Tag Support, Suggests Other Ways To Manage Duplicate Content
While Google has recently announced its support of the canonical tag across different domains, Bing says it’s still working on supporting the canonical tag on a single domain, and suggests webmasters should rely on other means to manage duplicate content. The rel=”canonical” link element was introduced earlier this year as a way for webmasters to […]
Video Interview With Bing’s Webmaster Team
Rand from SEOmoz posted a 17 minute interview with the Bing webmaster team from Microsoft. In the interview he talks with Eric, Rajesh, and Alessandro from Bing about topics including market share, the Yahoo deal, SEO for Bing, Bing webmaster tools, and the Bing IIS Toolkit. Here is the video: SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Interview: […]
Bing Continues With Fake Referrers: What Part Of Stop Don’t They Understand?
For over two years now, Microsoft’s search engine has been generating fake information that can make site owners think they’re getting strange search traffic (including porn traffic), when they are not. It’s time for this to come to an end. The culprit? Microsoft’s “crawler,” the software that visits web pages across the web that go […]
Bing To Ramp Up MSNBot 2’s Workload
Microsoft announced that MSNBot 2, which is currently in beta, may be ramped up a lot more and webmasters might begin to notice the new bot in their log files. The new bot has been out there since December 2008, and the useragent is just about the same as the original bot. New Bot: msnbot/2.0b […]
How Live Search Penalties Work
The Live Search blog posted a comprehensive guide on how to determine if your site is penalized in Live Search and if so, what actions you can take to remedy the issue. I’ll highlight some of the key points in this excellent blog post. Microsoft said, “most webmasters who get penalized know why it happened.” […]
Live Search Discusses Good & Bad Links
Jeremiah Andrick from the Microsoft Live Search team has written a detailed blog post named Getting the right kind of links. In this blog post, Jeremiah explains the issues Microsoft sees with link exchanges and then gives tips on how to get “the right kind of links.” Those tips include to be the “subject matter […]
What Is Search Engine Spam? The Video Edition
Search engines tell marketers not to spam them. Many search marketers also advise newcomers not to spam. Spamming issues get debated online. But what is search engine spam? What’s it look like? How’s it smell? And why do search engines (not to mention users) hate it? At our recent SMX East search marketing conference, representatives […]
Google & Microsoft Share Advice For Webmasters, SEOs
The ever-helpful teams writing for Google’s Webmaster Central blog and Microsoft Live Search’s Webmaster Center blog have published a variety of videos and presentations this week in the name of helping webmasters and search engine optimizers.
Live Search Is Updating, Expect Ranking Changes
Live Search September 2008 Update Underway from the Search Engine Roundtable reports discussion at WebmasterWorld that Live Search is undergoing a major index and ranking update. The Live Search results seem to have changed, and webmasters and SEOs are taking notice. I personally noticed referral increases and drops from Live Search on some of the […]
iProspect: Blended Search Resulting In More Clicks On News, Images, And Video
Since the advent of “blended” or “universal search” last year across the major engines, there’s been ongoing discussion and speculation about its impact on user behavior and search marketing. Gord Hotchkiss last year wrote extensively about how blended search (on Google) has in fact shifted the user focus from the so-called “golden triangle” at the […]