'Net Features : bing

Bing Change History Connects Action to Results

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:55:00 GMT

Digital advertising today moves fast, and if you don’t analyze what’s going on once in a while you’ll likely miss something really important.

That’s why it’s good to see Bing’s recent announcement that it will soon release a Change History Graph to help advertisers understanding what exactly affected ad performance.

The feature will essentially enable advertisers to understand which individual actions influence what specific type of performance improvement and can dramatically improve optimization efforts – at least for those using Bing Ads.

Users will be able to see all the changes they have made to a campaign (be it new keywords or different ad copy) and identify the adjustments that were most influential and to what extent.

Apple's Siri Searches with Bing

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 14:00:00 GMT

The "search" news of the month so far (it might eventually be the search news of the year) has emerged from Apple's recent WWDC event.

It appears that when iOS 7 is officially released, Siri will use Bing as its default search engine. That's really big news in the world of search as it suggests that Google could eventually be replaced for Bing in Safari as well. Bing will provide search results and Apple will provide the UI - much like the relationship Yahoo has with Bing.

Siri/Apple will continue to pull content and answers from numerous sources including Twitter and Wikipedia, as well as numerous other third-part data providers for everything from restaurant reviews to sports scores - content that Bing already has at its disposal.

If you're looking to capitalize on this development, it might be wise to start considering optimizing for Bing straight away.

Auto-Generate Sitemaps With Bing

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 28 May 2013 14:30:00 GMT

Sitemaps are an important tool for search engine optimization professionals in that they provide an opportunity to expose or reveal to search engines the pages on their sites that they want indexed and crawled.

While most search engines do a fine job crawling pages on their own and don't always need the information that sitemaps offer, they are good to have as they provide webmasters a way to ensure that pages are at least available to the engines - and for many that's a really big deal.

Last week Bing announced the official release of its Bing XML Sitemap Plugin 1.0 which was initially released in beta back in February 2013. The open source server-side technology takes care of generating XML Sitemaps compliant with sitemaps.org for websites running on Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows® Server as well as Apache HTTP Server.

Bing's plugin essentially creates two types of sitemaps - a comprehensive version (based on recent traffic activity - more on that shortly) which includes all the URLs on a site and a delta sitemap which includes those pages which were recently changed within a configurable time window (which search engines can then prioritize). Bing's plugin automatically adds the <lastmod> value and generates <priority> values based on how popular the URLs were (visit count - essentially, the priority of a page is calculated as the visit count for the URL divided by 2 times the average visit count for the entire host site).

The newly updated plugin has a number of other improvements and features worthy of note, including being able to automatically ping the search engines after each Sitemap update (only Bing and Google at the present time), a better computation algorithm of the <priority> value, configurable URL parameter handling, 404 handling, link rel=canonical handling, and flexibility of what gets added to robots.txt.

The Bing XML Sitemap Plugin (1.0) is available for IIS 6.0 or higher and Apache. The plugin binaries and source code is avaiable within the Microsoft Download Center or the Bing XML Sitemap download page in Bing Webmaster Help Center.

Bing Makes it Easier to Find People

Allison Howen — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:45:00 GMT

According to Bing, people are the second most searched for category on its search engine, and represent nearly 10 percent of all searches.

Because of this, the company has launched a new feature to its search engine called People Autosuggest, which enables users to find people faster from the search box.

For example, if you leverage Bing to search for a celebrity, politician, athlete or professional with a publicly available LinkedIn profile, Bing will provide a snapshot of information about that person (as well as other prominent people who share the same name) directly below the search bar. This makes it easier and faster to discover the exact person you are looking for, as well as increases the visibility of searched-for people.

Bing’s blog states that this feature not only makes it simple for users to keep tabs on their favorite celebrities or sports stars, but can also be used to learn more about someone’s professional background. Additionally, Bing notes that users should stay tuned for future updates to Snapshot (which is the center column of the search page that displays answers at a glance), as the company is “constantly expanding the number of available entities in Snapshot, including people, places and things.”

Session-Based Keyword Research

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:15:00 GMT

Bing suggested a rather unique approach to keyword research that search engine optimizaiton professionals may seriously want to consider.

Keyword research is clearly important to the success of an SEO campaign as you need to know what content will attract users. But users aren't static (they don't search the same things over and over) - they're dynamic and your approach to keyword research, as well as content development strategies, should match.

Bing's suggestion is to supplement the keyword research you're currently engaged in and enhance with what it's calling session-based keyword research (instead of pure query-based model). While Bing throughout its post kept repeatedly and aggressively suggesting that no keyword tool exists (from any search engine) that would enable you to do this, it's doesn't take a visionary to see that Bing is obviously working on something for this implicit purpose.

The gist of the Bing keyword research approach is this - consider how your users search over an entire potential "session" with your brand. Bing provided a good example; a user that on one day searches for "adopt a dog" and the next day might search for "puppy training." There's a distinct progression in user behavior. When content marketers (and marketers in general) can expand their vision about the broader and longer experience of a user, they'll be better able to position their products, content and services to users when and how they might want them.

The suggestion also has ramifications for advertising. Brands that fit quite neatly in a particular category - a pet store for example - might soon see a tool (a Bing Ads keyword tool perhaps) which suggests a more comprehensive keyword flow and be able to opt directly into it for retargeting.

Bing’s Social Sidebar Gets Interactive

Allison Howen — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:47:00 GMT

Microsoft is making its search engine even more social, by allowing its users to comment and like stuff on Facebook directly from Bing.

The search engine’s social sidebar, which was launched last year, now allows users to view comments on relevant Facebook posts within the sidebar, as well as allows users to add their own comments or like posts without leaving Bing. This enables users to see what their Facebook connections might know about the topic that they are searching for and engage with them without leaving the search page.

Bing’s blog provides this example:

“Let’s say I’m searching for Beyoncé tickets because I know she is coming to town soon. I can see that my friend has recently posted that she has an extra ticket to the show. Now without leaving the Bing results page, I comment directly to her post letting her know that I’d love to join her for the concert. I’ve gone from simply browsing to attending a concert in just a few easy steps – all thanks to Bing.”

In order to leverage this interactive feature, users must connect their Facebook account with Bing, which can be done in the top right corner of the search engine.

Ad Keyword Distribution Visualized

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:15:00 GMT

Last week Bing announced the upcoming introduction of a feature which will enable Bing Ads users to visualize key performance indicators across thousands of keywords and better explore optimization opportunities.

Bing's Keyword Visualization Graph is really a "big picture" kind of tool to understand performance, but the value really comes with its ability to provide marketers with insights on their most high-impact keywords.

The Keyword Distribution Graph places keywords into a set of performance buckets which are represented as a bar in the screenshot below. The length of the bar equals the number of keywords falling in the bucket of a particular range.

Advertisers can choose from eight different metrics including Clicks (seen below), impressions, spend, average position, conversions and more. Users can even interact with the graph (by using the slider and side bracket features) to examine the data at different performance levels.

What Internet Retailers Spend on Paid Search

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:31:00 GMT

Paid search is a significant driver of impressions for Internet retailers but acquiring users through the channel certainly does not come cheap.

Search engine intelligence provider AdGooroo released a thought-provoking infographic on the paid search retail universe which breaks down the $2.3 billion dollars spent on performance advertising (full year 2012 for AdWords combined with half-year 2012 for Yahoo! Bing) by retail category.

“Mass retailers” collectively spent a whopping $490 million and as a result received far and away the most impressions of any retail category according to AdGooroo which calculated that Amazon, Target, Wal-Mart, jcpenney and Macy’s racked up a whopping 13 billion impressions in total.

Adgooroo also took a closer look at the 2012 paid search spend for specific retail categories – a useful exercise in determining sector growth potential and current competitiveness. Besides the $490 million for mass retailers (approximately 21% of the total spend), six retail categories spent over $100 million including Apparel & Fashion ($271M), Consumer Electronics ($202M), Home Improvement ($155M), Stationary, Greeting Cards & Printing ($150M), Beauty & Cosmetics ($101M), and Shoes ($100M). Spend for Sporting Goods ($94M), Jewelry ($78M), and Flowers/Mail Order Gifts ($80M) also made a respectable showing to round out the list.

How Windows 8 will Impact Your Marketing Strategy

Administrator — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:15:00 GMT

By Jessica Davis, Godot Media

Windows 8 debuted in October last year. Following its launch and imminent adoption, marketers have started exploring ways to tweak their marketing strategies to leverage the new changes. Before we get into the implication of Windows 8 for search marketing, here’s a look at just how different a search system it provides.

#1 In place of the Start button, there is a side panel to navigate the OS

#2 Instead of static icons greeting you, now there is a Start screen that allows for custom content search

#3 The dramatic new shift to touch-screen is a highlight of Windows 8. The focus is on touch-based computing over the standard mouse clicks

Some points to ponder over

Consider #1 and #2 above – what does the innovative Windows 8 interface mean for marketers? Presently (and traditionally) you browse more than you search, e.g. most interfaces expect you to work your way through icons to locate what you’re looking for. Search is the next resort when you cannot find what you want after browsing. Windows 8 makes search the focal point, thrusting it in front of you. This is a good thing as it helps you find what you want more easily and quickly.

When search becomes the primary way to navigate, you have the opportunity to custom-create your messages targeting users’ intent and do it across different environments. The potential for this form of targeting on Windows 8 apps is huge, in the near future.

With reference to #3 – touch-friendliness is at the core of the Windows 8 experience. So, you may need to redirect your attention to touch-screen devices that consumers use to search for your products. The age of mobile computing is already upon us, and it is time to make your website and applications touch-compatible. This optimization will allow tablet and touch-screen smartphone users with Windows 8 to access your site and offerings online very easily. Also, if your present website has small links or nested drop-down menus, you may want to update your site for visitors’ benefit.

Flash is out, app store is in

There are two browser versions in Windows 8, one working pretty much like your standard browser with Flash and plug-in support, and a touch-based version that only supports Flash for Microsoft-whitelisted sites and does not allow plug-ins. So, if your site has animations and other Flash-based elements, it won’t work on the Windows 8 default browser. Again, you may want to re-think your marketing strategy around this change.

If you have invested in iOS and Android apps, it just may be the time to think about a Windows version, now that Windows 8 has an app store. The app store is concentrating on mobile, touch-based applications, meaning it may become equally important as its Android and Apple counterparts in the future.

Bing as Windows 8’s primary search app

Bing is the default search engine for Windows 8, though you have the option to download Google and other search apps from the Windows app store. With Bing occupying center stage, it is quite likely that it could emerge as a stronger contender to Google. Nokia is also planning to launch phones with Windows 8 as the OS – it may see a change in its fortunes. This will also change the way mobile marketing is viewed and performed.

The results page on Bing search app also has a much different layout compared to its web counterpart. It is obviously optimized for touch-screen users. These are the notable changes:

- The typical vertical view is replaced by a horizontal layout, making it easier for users to swipe across the screen for more results

- The sponsored ads are embedded within listings and not placed on top of the natural listings

- The ads have a green background color for instant identification\

The new positioning of sponsored ads may not catch user attention immediately, which is a perceived disadvantage of the new layout. You can look at it differently – as the horizontal layout allows users to see all listings side-by-side, they are more likely to click on links most relevant to their search. In a nutshell, the new positioning delivers a more efficient search experience to users. What you – as a marketer – can do is create more relevant ads that target user intent effectively, for best click-through results.

About the author

Jessica Davis is a senior content writer with Godot Media. She has years of experience in working closely with online businesses, helping them refine their marketing strategy through optimum use of content. She works closely with other blog content writers at Godot Media. Her other interests - besides online content strategy, Internet marketing and search engine optimization - are technology, sports and fashion.

Are Redirects Outdated?

Amberly Dressler — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Consider Bing to be a webmaster’s friend with a truck. This is because Bing is helping them move.

Webmasters can use Bing’s new Site Move tool to tell the search engine that their sites have moved and permanently redirected their sites, or sections of their sites, to a new location, which could eventually eliminate the need for redirects.

This new tool does not replace 301 redirects initially, but the Site Move tool can help website owners get their redirects reflected in Bing’s index more quickly. This is also important advancement for providing a better overall user experience, because webmasters who use too many redirects can slow down their website.

Bing emphasizes that this tool is not just for domain moves.

“Whereas other Webmaster Tools only allow a ‘Change of Address’ from one domain to another, we wanted to allow Web publishers more flexibility,” said Bing’s Webmaster Blog. “So, we will offer two different types of move notifications to support the following scenarios:

1. You are moving and redirecting a bunch of URLs from one place to another within the current site. This scenario is great if you want to notify us of a major URL move within the same site. This comes in handy when you’ve redesigned your Site Architecture and are now redirecting many URLs to new locations, and you want us to pick up on this change as soon as possible.

2. You are moving and redirecting URLs from this site to another verified site. This type is a great way to notify us that you are moving from one domain to another domain. You can move to any other domain that you have also verified as a site in Bing Webmaster Tools.”

Once a webmaster has selected one of these two options, they’ll need to select a move scope: domain, subdomain or directory. Additionally, before notifying Bing of a site move, make sure that the permanent redirects are set up correctly. Over time, the redirects will be obsolete as the new locations build links, trust, clicks, etc., but the transition will take time, which means webmasters should plan to keep the redirects in place for several months.

Bing Sitemap Plugin Accommodates Webmasters

Michael Garrity — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:45:00 GMT

Last week was a big one for Bing. The Mircosoft-owned search engine announced a substantial update that consisted primarily of three major changes.

Two of these refinements are distinctly user-centric, as they provide a new tile-based image search layout (similar to the interface of Windows 8 and Windows Phone devices) that comes with revamped “Friends Photo Search” functionality, as well. The other change consists of a series of autosuggest enhancements meant to improve the search experience for users by making autosuggestions faster and more intuitive with the addition of “ghosting” features, which include complimentary text where a user is typing that is already highlighted, so that searchers can either accept the suggestion or keep typing to have the ghosting text change based on additional information.

However, the third Bing update was made with webmasters in mind; it is a plugin that makes it considerably easier to create an XML sitemaps to submit to the search engine. This tool will be especially useful for those website owners that aren’t using a content management system (CMS) to develop XML sitemaps.

As you probably know, XML sitemaps allow webmasters to give search engines a comprehensive and, most importantly, accurate representation of their websites, thus letting them control what the search engines will index, at least in terms of priority. Webmasters can even inform Bing of new or updated content on their sites.

There are many benefits to utilizing sitemaps, the most obvious of which is that users will always have a full, updated list of all of the URLs on their site, plus a list of all the URLs that were recently modified. This makes it much easier for a search engine’s crawlers to prioritize all of a website’s various URLS, which will help keep bot traffic bandwidth down.

Bing’s Sitemap Plugin, which is an open source project that was made available through an Apache license, is compliant with sitemaps.org and runs on Microsoft IIS servers, as well as Linux/UNIX servers that run Apache. It can create two different types of sitemaps: The first is a comprehensive sitemap of all the URLs seen in server traffic, and the other is a sitemap that’s dedicated to storing URLs that have recently changed. Furthermore, the plugin doesn’t just generate a list of URLs; it also adds <lastmod> and <priority> tags and values to a sitemap based on a page’s popularity.

But among the most important aspects of the sitemap plugin is the amount of control that it gives to users. Webmasters that use the Bing plugin to create their sitemaps will be able to control exactly what gets added to it, and the plugin will be able to detect any Disallow and Allow directives inside a site’s robot.txt, thus allowing it to skip any URL patterns that shouldn’t be added. In addition, it provides greater control through various configuration files with rules that will augment pre-existing robots.txt Disallow directives, and webmasters will be given total control over selecting those query parameters that the plugin should honor and include in added URLS.

The Bing Sitemap Plugin can be configured to operate in four different site and server scenarios: 1. Single site on a single server, 2. Single site on multiple servers, 3. Multiple sites on a single server or 4. Multiple sites on multiple servers. When the plugin operates across multiple servers, it enables a merge process that generates a single, unified sitemap that can be distributed across all of them.

With the addition of the Bing Sitemap Plugin, the search engine has taken another step toward becoming more webmaster-friendly, which will be important if it ever hopes to take away market share from Google. What do you think about the new plugin? Will it convince you to focus more on optimizing your website specifically for Bing? Let us know in the comments.

Bing and the Evolution of Social Search

Michael Garrity — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 20:30:00 GMT

One complaint that Internet users tend to lodge about Google is that the Web services company tries to force users into adopting all of its various properties to get the full range of benefits from using just one of them.

Of course, Google does this because it wants to keep as many people using all of its many services (search, Gmail, YouTube, Google+, etc.) as it can. For those that do use them all, Google provides seamless integration across its Web properties that allows users to stay logged in on all of the company’s websites, while promising a personalized experience based on their pervious actions – no matter where they are at the time.

Bing's Social Adaptation

Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which is still trying to catch up after Google’s massive head start, has decided to take a wildly different approach to socializing the search process for users. Rather than trying to be inclusive and requiring users to stay within the confines of only its Web properties to provide a social, personalized search experience, Bing has decided to try to extend its social search capabilities as far across the Internet as it can; it did this by partnering with the undisputed biggest name in social media: Facebook.

With Facebook (and its 1 billion users), Bing is able to cast a very wide net across the social Web. After all, many websites now incorporate some sort of Facebook data, whether that’s by including social login in its comment sections or just adding a “Like” button to a content page. This seemingly ubiquitous presence all over the ‘Net is both Facebook and Bing’s biggest asset against Google, and by combining one another’s services (and user data), they may just stand a chance at providing an alternative, less-exclusive and potentially better social search experience.

While the Bing and Facebook partnership began when the search engine provided the Web search functionality for the social network, they have since done much more to integrate the two services. Now, Bing searchers can actually see recommendations and social signals from their Facebook friends as part of their search results by seeing what those other users “Like” or talk about relating to the search query at hand.

Graph Search: An Evolutionary Leap

More recently (as in last week), Facebook announced the beta release of Graph Search, a Bing-powered solution to let users search the content they have shared on the social network. This tool will help people discover information based on data that Facebook has collected from its users, allowing them to search across all of their Facebook content and connections to find new people, places and things.

But the real point here is that Facebook and Bing worked together to create “a unified search experience” that allows users to search beyond Facebook, showing Web search results from Bing that use “social context and additional information” (e.g. Facebook pages). For instance, when a Facebook user searches for something on the site, Bing results will show up alongside Facebook content with additional news and information that is annotated with data about how many people "Liked" and shared the contents of those search results on Facebook. In short, the social network has begun to integrate Bing Web search results into its site search results and combining them with exclusive Facebook data.

Looking Forward

Granted, this is still in an experimental phase for Graph Search, and it is in no way ready to compete with the combined efforts of Google+ and Google’s Search Plus Your World socially personalized search initiative, but what is important is that it finally gives Bing something of a social edge on The Big G. By joining forces with Facebook, Bing not only has access to the social data of a significantly larger user base than Google+, but it also has a much larger group of websites and blogs that integrate Facebook services from which it can pull information and improve its search results.

Perhaps most important, however, is that the Bing/Facebook approach doesn’t really require (Facebook) users to change behavior, as these new social search features are being integrated into each brand’s regular services. This slow, less-obtrusive transition could help spur on the gradual, refined and, ultimately, more successful evolution of social search.

Bing Adds People and Places to Snapshot

Allison Howen — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 19:43:00 GMT

Bing's Snapshot, which displays information such as maps, movie times and restaurant menus directly within search result pages, now includes two new categories – people and landmarks.

Snapshot is the middle column between Bing’s main search results and the social sidebar that resides on the right side of the results page. The feature, which was launched in June, displays relevant information related to search queries in order to make it easier for users to take actions, such as booking a hotel room, directly from the results page. However, according to Bing's blog, the company ran thousands of experiments to determine what topics are most frequently searched for since the launch of Bing's three-column redesign, and the data led Bing to include people and places to Snapshot's functionality.

Now upon a search query for a famous person, celebrity or place, Bing displays relevant facts about the topic to make it easier for users to find exactly what they are looking for before clicking through to another website. Furthermore, Snapshot includes content such as reviews, movie trailers and links that make it easy for users to discover information with a glance or take actions, such as listen to or purchase music, with just one click.

It is also important to note that this isn't the last update for Snapshot, because according to Bing's blog, the company will be adding more categories in the coming weeks.

Get to Know Bing's Webmaster Guidelines

Michael Garrity — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 20:45:00 GMT

The big news in the search engine world this week has been the release of Bing’s Webmaster Guidelines (finally!), which are meant to help the webmasters and publishers get their content found and indexed on the Microsoft-owned search engine.

Slowly, but surely, Bing has been chipping away at Google’s long standing dominance in the search engine market, and with the release of these guidelines, the company has taken its biggest shot yet by positioning itself as a worthy alternative to Google that webmasters can get behind.

In many ways, the initial success of Google that led to it becoming the global and cultural phenomenon that it is now was due in large part to its willingness to cater to webmasters right out of the gate by providing them with useful information, tools and programs that they could use to develop and monetize their sites.

Until now, Bing has been slower to fully come around to webmasters, although the search engine has had a set of Webmaster Tools available for some time, which proved to be a good first stop in ingratiating itself with webmasters. With the release of the new Bing Webmaster Guidelines, the company is committing to being a webmaster-friendly service that puts their needs top-of-mind, and although the Guidelines aren’t much different than Google’s, they do provide a great refresher on what how Bing crawls, ranks and indexes sites.

Let’s take a look:

Content

First and foremost, the job of a webmaster is to publish content and get it noticed by the search engines, which are, for lack of a better term, too dumb to notice it on their own. Webmasters must provide “clear, deep, easy to find content” on their sites that make it more likely to be found, and ultimately indexed and shown in search results. Obviously this includes Web pages, but also images, white papers and videos, among other types. Rich, content-heavy sites that engage users and provide valuable (and evergreen) information are always the most sought after by search engines, and Bing is no exception.

Links

Gathering useful, authoritative links is one of the primary purposes of SEO, as they help Bing (and other search engines) “find new content and establish a vote of confidence between websites. As part of the Guidelines, Bing offers a resource section on link building that explicitly states that the search engine prefers organic links and says that the best ways to build links is by offering unique and engaging content, enabling social sharing and enabling copy-and-paste code snippets for visitors.

Social

With Google’s attempts to push for personalized search to become the new norm, the social aspect of Bing’s indexing and ranking is now the biggest consideration that webmasters must make, largely because of the Microsoft/Facebook partnership that integrates the world’s largest social network with Bing that includes a visitor’s Facebook friends in their search results to help influence them and providing positive signals that can impact organic rankings. Specifically, Bing frequently points to social sharing signals as a major way that the search engine measures influence. And since Facebook has significantly more users than Google+, Bing may very well become the standard for socially influenced search results.

Indexation

Bing explains that the best ways to be indexed by the search engine (and thus appear in SERPs) is to either link your content to Bing or use features that come with the Bing Webmaster Tools (e.g. Submit URL or Sitemap Upload) to make them aware of your content. The Webmaster Tools also feature a Crawl Control feature that lets you manage how Bing’s bot crawls your content and control when and how quickly your site is crawled (hint: Bing encourages that you do it quickly and deeply).

Technical

This section of the Bing Webmaster Guidelines examines a variety of different structural aspects of a website that can affect how they are crawled, indexed and eventually ranked on Bing’s SERPs. These include page load time, robots.txt, sitemaps, site technology, redirects and canonical tags.

Search Engine Optimization

The Guidelines directly distinguish the mains areas that webmasters should focus on when optimizing their websites, which include title tags, meta description tags, alt tags, <h1> tags, internal links, outbound links, social sharing, “crawlability” (i.e. XML sitemaps, robots.txt, navigational structure, URL structure, etc.), site structure (i.e. links, clean URLs, content hierarchy, etc.) and rich media warnings.

It also breaks down specific on-page SEO information about head copy, body copy, anchor text, content and links. For instance, it suggests using unique, relevant titles and descriptions that are around 65 and 160 characters, respectively. The Guidelines also inform webmasters that they should only use one <h1> tag per page, base their content on keyword research, don’t use images to house content, use targeted keywords as anchor text to support other internal pages, use <rel canonical> tags to help engines understand which pages they should index and much more.

Tactics to Avoid

Presumably just to be nice, the Bing Webmaster Guidelines also spell out a handful of different tactics that webmasters should avoid to keep from getting penalized by the search engine in a way that would negatively affect their rankings and standing on the site. In particular, the Guidelines warn against cloaking, using link building schemes (i.e. link farms, three-way linking, etc.), meta fresh redirects, duplicate content and social media schemes.

While the suggestions laid out in the Bing Webmaster Guidelines aren’t exactly groundbreaking, they do provide a great template and reference source for webmasters as they work to optimize their sites for search engines, particularly if they want to improve their Bing rankings. And since the Bing-Yahoo Network currently accounts for approximately 30 percent of the search market, it’s certainly not something they’re going to want to blow off.

Sitelink Extensions in Bing Ads

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 19:06:00 GMT

In its ongoing quest apparently to be just like its main rival Google, Microsoft this month released Sitelink Extensions in Bing Ads.

Just like its Google counterpart, Sitelink Extension in Bing Ads offer advertising an opportunity to showcase relevant/important sections of a site, adding additional messaging or information without modifying text ads or keywords.

Bing noted that during the pilot phase of Sitelink Extensions, "most" of its advertisers experienced an click-through rate increase of between 15 and 25 percent when compared to standard search ads.

Bing Ad Sitelink Extensions can be added through the Big Ads user interface, the desktop editor or directly through the Bing Ads API.