Blogs

As we alluded to in last week’s Index Quality blog, today’s update will focus on one specific spam filtering mechanism we rolled out a few months ago that targets a common spam technique known as URL keyword stuffing (KWS.) What is URL KWS? Like any other black hat technique, the goal of URL KWS, at a high level, is to manipulate search engines to give the page a higher rank than it truly deserves. The underlying idea unique to URL KWS relies on...
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As I mentioned in the July 15 blog introducing Bing Index Quality, one of the key dimensions of our work is web spam detection and filtering. The overview of our approach to this complex problem will be the focus of today’s update. What is web spam? On the surface, our definition is fairly straightforward and intuitive. We think of a webpage as spam if its owner uses black hat SEO techniques in an effort to game our search algorithms with the goal...
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Today’s new businesses have much in common with their older counterparts. The need to acquire new leads, drive revenue, market their product or service. The need to manage overhead, do more with less and stay one step ahead of the competition. So from, say 1974 to 2014, some things haven’t changed much. One thing you never started a business without “back in the day” was a business plan. And that same thinking should be in place today, but in a...
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The Bing/Inc Roadshow is coming to an end. It’s been a jam packed tour for the last 4 events in Nashville, Chicago, Atlanta and Boston, with capacity crowds, excellent questions and easy access to answers. The panel, with industry heavyweights such as Maisha Walker of Message Medium, Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay Inc, Marty Weintraub of aimClear (and myself) is set to meet up again during the final road show event in Houston, Texas. It promises to be...
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Malware, and the possibility of infection, is an unfortunate reality facing internet users today. At Bing, we take our job of providing a safe searching experience to our customers very seriously and this anti-malware effort is one of the core elements of the Bing Index Quality charter. We’ve been in this game for many years and have developed comprehensive solutions that minimize user’s risk of infection and maintain the integrity of our index...
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For every business online come an almost limitless number of areas to learn about, become proficient in and continually work on. Many people end up good in an area because repetition and the “school of hard knocks” teaches them a workable path. And while some areas are no brainers (knowing your product, for example), they still can present legitimate challenges to a business. Areas like Usability often get talked about, but are just as often...
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The internet can often feel like a giant cesspool of low quality, illegal or malicious documents. The mere mention of malware, adware and viruses is enough to send even the most experienced internet surfers running for cover. And yet, these represent just the tip of the iceberg of poor quality documents. Searchers also have to deal with phishing sites, fraudulent sites or sites propagating scams, spammy sites…. Well, you get the picture. On top of...
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Sometimes, despite a webmaster’s best efforts, Bing may choose to serve a title that is different to the title of a web site or document. Let’s walk through the process to see how Bing selects a title and what you can do to help us select yours. You have probably designed your site to maximize your CTR, you have reviewed best practices and SEO techniques, and you have a plan to maintain relevant and up-to-date content. Your HTML Title is exactly...
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In January we told you about our goal to bring the Power of Bing Knowledge to Webmasters. In April we followed up on that promise and announced Bing Knowledge Widget. For the first time, we empowered every webmaster to use the entity data from the Bing Knowledge repository. Since then, webmasters have added the embed code to thousands of pages to enhance their websites with the rich entity information from the Bing Knowledge system. Integration...
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The Bing Webmaster Tools and Inc. Magazine Roadshow scheduled for Chicago this week officially sold out earlier today! Great news for the folks who are intending to come to the Wit Hotel this Thursday! This follows a standing-room-only kickoff event in Nashville three weeks ago. The sad news is, for those in Chicago, we’re at capacity, though check for a wait list. The good news is we’ve got three more dates/cities to hit after Chicago...
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