At Live Search, one of the most common questions we receive from our peers at microsoft.com and msn.com is how to optimize their sites for search. But microsoft.com is unlike most other sites on the Internet. It is huge, containing millions of URLs, and is growing all the time. However, large content sites like microsoft.com and msn.com are not the only sites that can have an infinite number of URLs. There are also large ecommerce sites and...
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Live Search is committed to continuing to improve how we discover and crawl your content. In the coming weeks, we will be testing an update to MSNBot, which may show up as a new crawler name in your referrer logs. The new crawler user agent string will appear as: msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm) You’ll still see the current version msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm) as Live Search’s primary user agent. We...
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On the web, links are the coin of the realm and as such, it is probably one of the most talked about subjects in webmaster blogs and at search conferences. In the last few weeks, there have been a few blog posts and "link" related product launches that make it clear there are still some misconceptions about what are effective and beneficial ways to build links. Link building is one of the most important and difficult jobs for a webmaster...
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In August, we shipped the largest update to Live Search Webmaster Center tools since we launched the site over a year ago. In that update, we committed that we would continue to bring you important updates and resources designed to make your life as a site owner easier. Today, we are happy to announce that we have shipped several new features, which continue to build on the work we have done. Fix issues on your site In our August release, we...
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Last week at PubCon, I spoke on a panel titled Video Engines – New Kids Rocking the Web. The discussion focused on what was new in the online video space in production, optimization, and search. For those that weren’t there we felt it would be good to share the presentation and some additional information on video search. Be sure to run some of the demo queries you can find in the presentation below. Video Engines – New Kids...
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Are you attending SMX London? We are too!  Nathan Buggia, Senior Program Manager Lead for the Live Search Webmaster Center will be on hand presenting during several sessions and we hope that if you are in attendance that you will take the time to stop by and listen. You can find him speaking at: Day 1: Keynote  9:00 – 10:00 AM  : Empowering Search Marketers – The Next Generation Day 2:  Sessions 10:45...
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A big part of Web 2.0 is bringing the richness of desktop applications onto the Web, to create both a richer user experience and a stable development platform. With technologies like Asynchronous JavaScript And XML (AJAX), Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, we’ve made a lot of progress. As far as the Web has come, these technologies are still far from mature in realizing the promise to give modern developers and users the best of both...
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This is the second of three posts covering our presentations at SMX East last week. URLs are the foundation of the Internet. However, they can cause some significant problems for search engines due to the number of synonyms that are often automatically created for each piece of content. If there was only one thing I wanted the audience to take away from this presentation, it was that they should always create short, descriptive URLs, and redirect...
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Updated: SMX has posted the video for the What is Spam session.  One of the most common questions I get from companies concerned about search engine optimization (SEO) is which optimization tactics are acceptable by search engines and which ones are not. We pulled this session together with the help of Danny Sullivan and SMX to provide a definitive answer to that question and help clarify any misconceptions that the audience might have. This...
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Next week, October 6-8, the search community converges on Times Square for Search Marketing Expo East 2008. Danny Sullivan and his team have put together an educational schedule for this year’s SMX East, and the Live Search team is excited to be a part of it. As with every conference, representatives from Live Search and Microsoft Advertising will be on hand to help you learn practical tips and techniques to improve your search results, as...
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