What is spam? One could argue that spam is a multi-faceted thing. The word itself has many definitions. For example, it can be defined as a processed spiced ham and pork slathered with a gelatinous glaze food product found in a tin (it's apparently very popular in Hawai'i, don't you know?). However, spam is also often used to reference a very popular comedy sketch written and performed on Monty Python's Flying Circus (it was punctuated with a waitress reciting a menu in which the canned meat was used multiple times as a featured ingredient in almost every dish, which drives a woman customer to exclaim, "I don't like spam!"). It can also refer to all of the unwanted, advertising email that congests...
Everybody loves a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ). They often include tidbits of knowledge that are not easily found elsewhere, or present information in ways that often make it more understandable. The Webmaster Center team has been working hard to present more useful content through the team blog in recent months. We already have a FAQ of sorts through the Webmaster Center Help (see the Help system's left hand navigation for the Help-based FAQ). We also have some FAQ content in the Webmaster Center forums . We've also published a series of Webmaster Center blog comment Q&A posts (parts one and two so far) to address common questions posted to the blog (rather than the forum !)...
In August, we alerted webmasters to the news from the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) team of the beta 1 release of their excellent new tool, the IIS SEO Toolkit. The public response we received was very enthusiastic and supportive. In response to many requests, we followed that up with a more detailed article explaining how the new tool is installed as an extension of IIS 7. Since that time, the tool was refreshed in a beta 2 release and, as of November 13, a full version 1.0 release . Given the deserved popularity of the tool among web developers and search engine optimizers, I wanted to take a moment to explore what has changed with the IIS SEO Toolkit since the beta 1 article...
We still get many questions in our blog comments, even though we try to encourage our readers to post their questions to our Webmaster Center forums (which are actually staffed to answer your questions!). I do look through the blog comments every day and delete those that are junk (those that are empty, duplicated, offensive, and overtly spammy - see our Q&A reply on why blog comments are deleted in the 1st Webmaster Center blog Q&A post ). But I don't always get a chance to address the individual questions posted there. Since so many folks still ask questions in the blog comments, it's just easier to aggregate them and address them en masse in a post. And if reading this Q&A inspires...
In past SEM 101 articles, we've talked about the importance of inbound links to successful ranking (see "Links: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" - Part 1 and Part 2 ). We've already discussed many issues surrounding them, but we haven't done a dedicated post on how to be successful at link building from a search engine's perspective. Let's finally address that omission here and now. What is the point of building links? Your website is your self-representation on the Web. It's a major asset to your business, often simultaneously serving as your online business card, an introductory company brochure, detailed sales literature, supporting documentation, and a point of sales distribution point for...
Did you hear the news? Bing was recently upgraded with another set of exciting end-user features. Instead of reciting the long list of changes here, I'll just point you to the blog post in the Bing Search blog titled, " Bing's Next Chapter Begins Today ." The Bing engineering team has been focused on improving the already cool features that have made using Bing so much fun. One edit to the Bing home page has changed the way users navigate to the Toolbox page, the Webmaster Center tools , the blog , and the forums pages. On the Bing home page , click the EXPLORE link in the left list to browse to the Bing at a glance page. Scroll down that page to find all of the aforementioned links for the Webmaster...
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 that compliant search engine bots may or may not crawl. Robots.txt files are basically text files . However, even something as seemingly straightforward as a text file is not as simple as it might seem. Which type of file encoding scheme is used to save the file...
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 myriad of websites we index worldwide. As MSNBot 2.0b enters full-scale production, the time has come to retire our previous generation bot, MSNBot 1.1. By the end of the first week in November, you will no longer see the following user agent in your...
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 the Web is looking for pages that don't exist, so this is a big problem. Back in the early days of the Web, when you entered an incorrect URL, you got a nearly blank, stark white screen containing nothing but the simple words, "404 File not found." Yeah, thanks. That's...
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 sites have adopted the Translator widget and have been able to attract a much broader audience from around the world. Powered by the same machine translation technology that is used by Bing , Internet Explorer , and Office , the Translator widget provides...
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 question in the blog comments answered? A: Well, the Webmaster Center blog is really not the right place for such back and forth exchanges. In fact, at the end of each blog post, there is a reminder to post your questions and comments in the SEM forum . The collection of Webmaster...
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. In Part 1 of this series on malware , we discussed how to detect a malware infection on your website using tools like Bing’s Webmaster Center . The Part 2 post covered the resources and strategies for identifying the types and locations of malware code that typically affect websites with advice on how to remove it. The Part 3 post began the run-down through 10 recommendations...
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. However, I geeked out a bit here, and the column went a bit long (yeah, even longer than usual!), so I decided to break this last section up into two pieces. Who wants to read a white paper as a blog post? I mean, besides me? :-) While beefing up your computer security practices won’t necessarily have a direct affect your site’s SEO performance, consider the repercussions...
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. All told, this is bad news for conversions, don’t you think? This article is Part 2 of a three-part series on malware. Part 1 covered how to detect the presence of malware on your site by using the Bing Webmaster Center tools to get access to the information the...
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 sure it will not cause further complications. I will update this post when I receive word that the fix is in production. On behalf of all of us here in the Bing Webmaster Center team, we would like to extend our apologies and thank you for your continued patience...
