Increasing the size limit of Sitemaps file to address evolving webmaster needs

For years, the sitemaps protocol defined at www.sitemaps.org stated that each sitemap file (or each sitemap index file) may contain no more than 50,000 URLs and must not be larger than 10MB (10,485,760 bytes). While most sitemaps are under this 10 MB file limit, these days, our systems occasionally encounter sitemaps exceeding this limit. We are happy to announce that we are increasing sitemaps file size.
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Warning! Bing now offers enhanced malware warnings!

Bing has refined the generic malware warning to specifically call out phishing threats, and sites that are (likely) safe to visit but link to malicious binaries. The webmaster dashboard is updated for these refined warnings, which includes the binary paths triggering the warning. Today, Chad Foster from the Bing Team will walk us through the changes.
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Sitemaps – 4 Basics to Get You Started

Well managed sitemaps greatly increase Bing’s ability to locate, access and index all of the relevant URLs on your website. Today Fabrice Canel from the Bing Team will be talking about the best practices for managing your sitemaps. Cheers! - Avishek Mazumder, Program Manager II, Bing Webmaster Tools
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Announcing the Bing Mobile Friendliness Test Tool

Announcing the Bing Mobile Friendliness Test Tool

Earlier this year, we shared our approach to mobile-friendly search and ranking and talked about our plans for Webmaster tool additions that will aid site owners in their efforts to create mobile-friendly sites.  Today, I am happy to introduce you to Charu Puhazholi from the Webmaster Team and Shyam Jayasankar from the Mobile Ranking Team. In today’s post, Charu and Shyam will be talking about the availability of the Bing Webmaster Mobile...
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Link Explorer Being Retired in Webmaster Tools

Saying Goodbye to Link Explorer Saying goodbye is never easy, but the time has come to do just that with a member of the Bing Webmaster Tools family: starting October 1st, 2015 we are shutting down Link Explorer. Why say goodbye? Link Explorer has been part of Webmaster Tools since the June 2012 release (called “Phoenix”) and provided an easy way to see a sample of links pointing to a given site — not just your own — making it a simple...
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Reach Millions of Shoppers with Bing Image Data Feeds

In our April Webmaster post, we showed marking up your data increases exposure of your content to over 100M users of Bing and its partners.  Today, we are excited to deepen our relationship with webmasters and site owners by accepting image data feeds of your site content. Data feeds are the best way to influence how your content is presented in search results. For example, providing item purchase data enables the recently announced Places to Buy...
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Bing Moving to Encrypt Search Traffic by Default

At Microsoft, we’re committed to helping users keep their data safe and secure. That’s why we support the industry’s move to use of TLS protocols as part of our effort to expand encryption across our networks and services. Bing has already been offering users the option to encrypt search traffic for about a year and a half now. Beginning this summer, we will begin the process of encrypting search traffic by default. This means that traffic...
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Make Apps Stand Out in Search with App Linking

Make Apps Stand Out in Search with App Linking

You’ve focused your energy on optimizing your website to get traffic from search engines. You’ve done this with a great site structure and architecture, superb crawlability, and — of course — top notch content. More recently, you’ve been working mad hours to ensure your site shines on mobile. Perhaps you’re already mobile-friendly and are seeing the mobile-friendly label for your site in the search results. But now your company is going all in on...
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Our approach to mobile-friendly search

Our approach to mobile-friendly search

Mobile search continues to surge ahead and grow as a percentage of overall internet search queries. In November 2014, we shared our plans to make significant investments towards understanding the mobile friendliness of web pages. Since then, we have been investigating various approaches that leverage mobile friendliness to deliver the best possible mobile search experience on Bing. In this update, we share details on our mobile friendliness...
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