Atlanta Search Engine Marketing

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

~Daily Search Forum Recap: October 20, 2009~

Five days ago, we alluded to a possible Bing search index update when Microsoft fixed the issues with the Bing Webmaster Tools and blamed the issue on an “update to the search index.” But no Webmasters really made a big stink about an update, so I did not write a single post on that alone.

Now I see WebmasterWorld thread with confirmed reports from real webmasters taking notice of an update on Microsoft’s search engine, Bing.

Two senior members noticed the update. Billy S. said:

As I hit the enter key, I’m seeing two completely different SERPS on Bing – almost alternating. Anyone else seeing this?

Textex confirmed Billy’s findings saying, “I am seeing different results too. Looks like an update.”

The last Bing search index update was some time in August 2009, at least the last one we noticed.

Do you notice a change in your rankings and/or traffic from Bing?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

~Bing October 2009 Search Index Update~

It kind of makes you wonder how important Bing Webmaster Tools is to Microsoft when it takes them over three days to fix a bug that completely makes the tools unusable.

Monday morning, we reported that Bing Webmaster Tools had an unexpected error which disallowed webmasters from accessing any of their verified domains. Many threads and complaints in the Bing forums, amongst others, were created.

It took two days for the Bing forum representative to acknowledge the bug in the forums. Brett Yount posted a thread at the Bing Community over two days after the first report of the bug. He said:

As you are probably aware, the tools are currently down. We are working to correct this ASAP.

Then finally, yesterday at around 10am, three days after the first report of the bug, Microsoft fixed the issue. Here is what Brett said:

I just verified that the tools are running again. Though I can’t get into specifics, it looks like the problem was caused by an update to the search index. Needless to say, we are working to make sure more issues such as this do not happen in the near future.

Got that, an update to the search index caused this bug. So there was a search index update that seemed to go unnoticed for the most part. Well, there are some minor threads discussing some issues with the new index, but for the most part, it went unnoticed. That update, caused Webmaster Tools to fail and it took over three days for Microsoft to fix it.

Forum discussion at Bing Community.

~3 Days Later, Bing Finally Fixes Webmaster Tools Bug~

Michael Gray noticed that a search for Perez Hilton in Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, returns a set of pictures and a single search result (perezhilton.com). Here is a screen shot:

The question is why is Bing hiding everything else? They show tons of results for Paris Hilton and other ‘celebrities,’ why not Perez?

Stefan Weitz from the Bing team commented on Michael’s blog saying it is by design. He said:

Yes – that is by design. However, if you click on the “see other results containing Perez Hilton” the rest of the algo web results appear. We carefully monitor these “Best Match” results to make sure we aren’t firing this result type too frequently – let us know if you have feedback!

Yes, you can click on the Search for other results containing Perez Hilton to bring up standard web results. But why show only the “best match” when there are plenty of other great matches?

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

~Microsoft’s Bing Hiding Search Results For Perez Hilton~