If you are a webmaster and you use Bing webmaster tools, today is a good day. Microsoft has update the tools to bring new enhancements to the table that are based on your feedback.
The new updates target three key areas; sharing more data, increasing transparency and providing more useful tools. Posted below are a couple of the major areas that Microsoft revamped based on user feedback. It goes to show that if you talk, Microsoft will listen and respond accordingly.
· More Crawl Details information. Webmasters will no longer be limited to seeing inbound links that point only to pages returning a 400 header response code. Now anything listed under the 300, 400 & 500 codes, as well as URLs listed under the Robots.txt and Malware headings, will display inbound links to the URL.
· Expanded URL Normalization controls. Bing has increased the number of elements that can be normalized per domain from 25 to 50 items.
· Enabling of DNS verification. Bing has added a third verification choice for domains, allowing webmasters to place a discrete CNAME record on their DNS to validate a domain.
· Addition of adCenter data. Webmasters will begin seeing a column for “average CPC” when viewing Traffic Data and looking at keywords that drove traffic to a site.
Specific enhancements such as these help webmasters get the most out of their statistics and can help drive to better SEO and higher profitability. The above postings are a sample of the updates and the full listing can be found by checking out the Bing blog.