We’ve already covered in past blog articles some of the basics about how webmasters can use a file called robots.txt to control how search engine crawlers (aka bots) crawl their websites. But there is so much more to talk about with bots. So let’s take a bit of a deeper dive into the subject. Topic 1: Using the proper text file encoding The robots.txt file is used by webmasters to either specifically define which files and directories...
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The Bing team has been talking about its new crawler (aka bot), MSNBot 2.0b, in this blog for quite some time now. We have made numerous improvements in its performance, addressed some webmaster concerns, and published detailed information on how to control the bot with a robots.txt file. Today we are announcing that the new bot is fully operational. This development will enable Bing to do a better job at gathering the information we need from the...
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You’ve seen it. So have I. Nearly every person who has actively browsed the Web for more than 15 minutes has seen it. I’m talking about the dreaded 404 File Not Found error. When it occurs, users simply abandon their search on that site and go elsewhere. That’s a potential lost sale, subscription, or download opportunity (aka conversion) for the affected site! It has been estimated that up to 10% of traffic to large websites on...
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About eight months back, the Microsoft Research Translator team delivered an entirely unique way of delivering your website’s pages to visitors who speak a different language with no development effort on your part. Unlike any other translation widget/gadget available at that time, the Translator widget was unique in that it kept your audience on your site, rather than redirecting them to a proxy translation service. Since then, thousands of...
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We’ve been really busy here at the Bing Webmaster Center blog team, pumping out new content on a regular basis to create a nice library of content on issues that matter to webmasters and online publishers. I thought I’d take a moment to catch my breath, pause on creating a new thematic article (or yet another multi-part series!) for SEM 101, and address some commonly asked questions in the blog comments. Q: Why wasn’t my...
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OK, so I totally geeked out with my recommendations on how to better secure your webmaster computing environment. As a result, I had too much material for one post and thus had to split it up into two pieces. Let's wrap up this long series of posts on malware by finishing up with the last of the security recommendations.
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We're going to diverge a bit from our regularly scheduled programming. Normally this column discusses search engine optimization (SEO) and related elements of search engine marketing (SEM), but we're knee deep into our multi-part series on malware and we're going to begin the wrap-up with a talk about improving computer security.
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Malware infections are no laughing matter. When they afflict your website, they can infect your customers, who won't appreciate your sharing, intentional or not (and I'm guessing it's not)! And if Bing discovers malware on your site, your listing in the Bing search engine results pages (SERPs) will either be completely omitted or the link to your site will be disabled, so when the searcher clicks on it, only a malware warning appears.
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As some of you may have experienced, our “Add a site” page has been unavailable in some locales for the past several days. This is not a site-wide or even a global issue.  Unfortunately, this happened due to an update that uncovered a bug in the original code, which caused us to disable the page in one of our data centers. The good news is that we are testing a fix now and will be releasing it to production just as soon as we are...
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The Web is an incredible place, filled with amazing media, fascinating content, and wonderful social opportunities, and there’s more of each than anyone can possibly ever consume. But unfortunately, it’s not a benign place. There are more than a few malefactors out there who actively seek to take over your computer for a variety of nefarious purposes.
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