Bing Webmaster Tools adds crawl requests, crawl errors & indexed pages to performance report
Microsoft Bing has added some new metrics to the bing webmaster tools
crawl requests
crawl errors
indexed pages
Now all the related data is in one place in Bing – crawling and indexing your site and if there are errors.
Bing Officially Rebrands As ‘Microsoft Bing’
Microsoft is officially rebranding its Bing search engine as ‘Microsoft Bing,’ with a new logo and new colors.
Updated Bing.com homepage, which features the Microsoft logo
Bing Ads’ was changed to ‘Microsoft Ads’ last year.
Earlier limit was to submit maximum of 10 URLs per day and maximum of 50 URLs per month.
By releasing the Adaptive URL submission feature that increases the daily quota by 1000x, to submit up to 10,000 URLs per day, with no monthly quotas.
The daily quota per site will be determined based on the site verified age in Bing Webmaster tool, site impressions and other signals that are available to Bing.
Moms are becoming more tech savvy with lots of gizmos like Mobile, tablets, Smartphones, Camera’s & others. Bingads Industry Insights has an article on how mother’s day tech related gifts are gaining a popularity. One survey found that 64 percent of women said they would prefer a digital camera over half-carat diamond stud earrings. Electronics is now the 3rd most popular mother’s day gift.
Top tech gifts purchased were tablets (46 percent), smartphones (27 percent), computers (20 percent), cameras (13 percent) and e-readers (11 percent). In 2013 mother’s day sales hit nearly $20.7 billion, an increase of 11.3 percent over 2012..
Bing has released the top search trends for US in 2013. Beyoncé Knowles is the top searched person for 2013 followed by Kim Kardashian. Only 2 men are in the top 10 list, Justin Bieber (6th) and Barack Obama (10th). The list shows the top searches for 2013 & 2012. There are four newcomers to the top 10 in this year’s list, with Amanda Bynes coming in at #8, Madonna at #5 along with President Barack Obama at #10. Tim Tebow was the most searched athlete for 2013. Tebow moved up from #3 in 2012. Maria Sharapova, Kevin Ware & Tiger Woods are some of the other sports people.
Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter & linkedin are some of the top social media sites searched in 2013. Among the apps are Candy Crush stole the #1 spot, Angry Birds #2 and Bad Piggies #3. Xbox is the most searched entertainment electronic with iPhone #2 and Android #3 position.
Top Bing Searches for 2013
Floods in Uttarakhand have created havoc with thousands of people stranded in different parts of the state. Several thousand are missing & many have been killed as well. This has been described as the Himalayan Tsunami. The relief operations are in full swing with Army, Airforce, NDRA & others pitching in for rescuing people. One of the worst-affected is Kedarnath town with areas like Badrinath, Yamunotri & others. Several helicopters have been deployed with Food, medicines and other essentials were also carried to the needy.
Several states have announced financial, medical & other help to the Uttarakhand govt to help over come the crisis. This flood has also created a debate over whether this is due to Man made calamity or nature’s fury. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appealed to the people of India to stand with all those who are going through this harrowing time & appealed for donations Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund. Several ‘dharamashalas’ (rest houses for pilgrims) have also been swept away in the floods.
Websites, social media & blogs have been updating information on the Uttarakhand Floods. Videos & Pics have been posted in YouTube showing the mighty flood waters. Google has launched a missing person finder, if you have information on someone or looking for someone. On Twitter searching for #Uttarakhand, #kedarnath, #SaluteIndianArmy would provide the latest tweets & info on the flood relief.
NGO’s working in flood relief
For blood donation
Facebook & Google
Some of the media sites for info, video, pics & others on Uttarakhand Floods are
Right from the days of Altavista to Google, search has undergone a paradigm shift. Now, Google is the king of search. Whatever Google does to its algorithm, it will have a profound effect on the online world. Its recent changes (Penguin & Panda), created ripples with the way it affected search results. Past few years has seen the growth of mobile & tablets resulting in more local searches. Google correlate, a product from Google labs, finds search patterns which correspond with real-world trends.
Microsoft’s Scroogle is an anti Google campaign targeting its pay to rank shopping practices. On the website it is given as “when you limit choices and rank them by payment, consumers get Scroogled”. Recently there was another ad campaign from MS called Bing it on targeting search results. There is also PDF docs in the website showing the respective search site’s position. One can also submit their stories on bing’s facebook page.
Bing webmaster guidelines provide guidance on links, SEO, social media, content & others. These can be accessed under the content guidelines section. Technical part covers robots.txt, sitemap, site technology, redirects & others. It calls out to avoid cloaking, link schemes, social media schemes & duplicate content. They have also introduced Bing webmaster webinars covering different topics during Nov to Feb. More information about the webinars can be found here. From an SEO point of view, it covers all the major important issues.404 pages best practices is also included covering no advt, page returns a 404 status code & smart 404 pages.
Bing’s Tweet has caused an uproar in the social media. Bing tweeted for every retweet about the support for Japan Tsunami & earthquake, it will make a donation. This caused uproar in the twitter & backfired on Bing. A new hashtag started on Twitter #fuckyoubing & resulted in negative publicity. Bing later apologized for it. A fashion designer’s tweet also caused uproar sometime back. Social media should be used cautiously while making such statements. It should not be used for marketing purposes during the natural disaster.
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