Microsoft to support cross-domain Sitemaps

Today we’re pleased to announce an update to the Sitemaps Protocol, in collaboration with Google, and Yahoo! This update should help many new sites adopt the protocol by increasing our flexibility on where Sitemaps are hosted. Essentially, the change allows a webmaster to store their Sitemap files just about anywhere, using a reference in the Robots.txt file to establish a trusted relationship between the Sitemap file and the domain or...
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We're on our way to SMX West - are you?

In just hours, we will be heading to sunny Santa Clara California.  If you’re going to be attending SMX West be sure to come see us at one of the Live Search or adCenter sessions, booths or  at the Search Bowl.  Both Nathan and myself along with lots of other folks from Redmond will be making the rounds and enjoying a little bit of sunshine (hopefully!).   SMX West Keynote Panel Brad Goldberg, Keynote Generation...
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Announcing crawler improvements for Live Search

Today we’re pleased to announce several improvements in the crawler for Live Search that should significantly improve the efficiency with which we crawl and index your web sites. We are always looking for ways to help webmasters, and we hope these features take us a few more steps in the right direction. HTTP Compression: HTTP compression allows faster transmission time by compressing static files and application responses, reducing...
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I'm not ranking in Live Search, what can I do?

That’s a good question, and you’ve come to the right place.  If your site is not performing in Live Search or you are not being indexed by Live Search here are some steps you can take to change course and improve your rank.  First and foremost at Live Search ranking is free and you can’t pay to boost your website’s relevance ranking.  We have a completely automated ranking process which takes into account a...
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Listing Google ads in Live Search (doh!)

Some of you may have noticed Google advertisements showing up in Live Search results today. We have identified and resolved the issue, and you should see these disappear over the next couple days. The issue stems from the way Live Search handles content disallowed by the Robots.txt file. We regularly check the robots.txt file of a site to ensure that we don’t index and cache pages excluded by the webmaster. However, if we do find a link...
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Bing and cloaking detection

Since the inception of the Bing Search team a few years ago, we’ve been maniacally focused on one thing: relevance. We use the term relevance to mean that Bing finds the answer to your question better than any other source – whether your question is best answered by a website, or a real-time traffic map. And with our recent Fall update our relevancy has improved dramatically – to the point where we think we’ve got the best...
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SES Chicago and Webmaster World Las Vegas

If you’re going to be attending either SES Chicago or Webmaster World Las Vegas, then stop by and check out one of the Live Search/ adCenter sessions, booths or exciting social events. I will be at the freezing cold (but intellectually stimulating) SES Chicago, while Jeremiah (PM Webmaster Tools) and Martina (Dev Manager Webmaster Tools) will be basking in the warm glow of the Las Vegas slot machines (aka, the one arm bandits). Search...
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Greetings, webmasters!

We are glad you found your way to this blog. We, the Live Search Webmaster Team, have created this blog to help keep you informed on progress as we develop tools to assist you as webmasters. We will also be sharing from time to time on how to keep your site performing well. We want this blog to be a place for two way communication between Live Search and the webmaster community because we understand that SEO’s and webmasters need this kind...
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Come see the Live Search Webmaster Center team at SMX London

If you’ll be attending the inaugural Search Marketing Expo in London November 15-16, stop by and meet the meet Live Search Webmaster Team.  Nathan and Martina will be at the Live Search booth in the exhibit hall to meet you, answer your questions and to help you sign up to the webmaster center. Also Nathan will be speaking at a panel Friday on Dealing with the Penalty Box.  Along with Nathan, the panel also includes a number of...
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Get better results from Live

Today we’re happy to take the “private” label off our Webmaster Tools beta, and open it up to all webmasters and SEO professionals. This is a first step by Live Search to make it easier to ensure your site is getting the best crawling, indexing, and representation in Live Search results possible. Our goal is that it will lead to better traffic for your site, and better search results for our customers. In addition to the tools...
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