Showcase your brand and products with a new Multimedia Ads format

Microsoft Advertising has announced a new responsive search ad format, called Multimedia Ads. The ads will combine advertisers’ images, headlines and descriptions using machine learning to showcase your brand and products with a rich ad format. As per announcement “As part of our global rollout, customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam markets will start seeing this new ad type today, and all other customers will have this new feature in the next few weeks.”

What are Multimedia Ads?

Multimedia Ads are designed to combine your own assets like images, headlines, and descriptions with the power of machine-learning technology, to deliver the best attention grabbing large visual ads. These ads will be prominently featured on the right rail (right side of the search results) or in the mainline at the top of the search results pages. To help your Ad stand out even more and provide exclusivity, there will only be one Ad on a page, for only one advertiser at a time.

Where will Multimedia Ads Display?

Multimedia ads will be showed on the Bing search pages and will be featured prominently in the mainline at the top of the SERP or on the right rail. There will only be one multimedia ad per page, so only one advertiser can deliver a multi-media ad at a time.

Here are a few examples of what they can look like.

Mainline ad examples (4:1 aspect ratio)

Mainline ad with enhanced sitelinks (4:1 aspect ratio)

Right rail ad examples (1.91:1 aspect ratio)

How To Setup Microsoft Advertising Multimedia Ads?

Setup of Microsoft Ads should look very familiar, since it closely resembles Responsive Search Ads, but now we’re adding the ability to use rich visual assets in combination with text assets (see below). For best performance, Microsoft strongly recommend that you upload multiple ad variations of high-quality images in all 4 aspect ratios: 1.91:1, 1:1, 1:2 and 4:1.

What Image Sizes Should I Use?

Microsoft Advertising strongly recommend that advertisers upload multiple creative variations of high-quality images in all 4 aspect ratios: 1.91:1, 1:1, 1:2 and 4:1

Microsoft Multimedia Recommendations & Auto-Apply

Microsoft Advertising will create recommendations using advertisers’ existing image assets (such as image extensions) and text ads assets, as well as stock images (coming soon).

Once the recommendations are added to an account, advertisers will have a 7-day review period to apply or dismiss them, after which they’ll be auto-applied to the account. Advertisers can also opt out of the auto-apply functionality at the account level.

Bid Adjustment Settings

Multimedia Ads offer the richest ad experience on the search results page today and to effectively compete for the user’s attention a 40% bid modifier will be applied as the default setting. The ability to use positive bid adjustment settings will help your Ads get more visibility without affecting your performance of other ad types (currently supported range of 20% to 900%).

Upcoming Enhancements

Microsoft Advertising plans to roll out the following enhancements in the near future:

• Enhanced mainline experiences with new rich formats, including video.
• Multimedia Ads for Retail: Combining the power of Multimedia Ads with your product feeds.
• Additional Bing surfaces and expansion to the Microsoft Audience Network.
• New CPM-based auto bidding strategies for Multimedia Ads.
• Additional import opportunities of your rich media assets from other ad platforms.

With the help of Multimedia Ads, your brand and products can capture attention and drive more sales and more leads for your business. Check out the Multimedia Ads help page for more details.

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Microsoft Bing Adding New Features to Search Results

Get Inspired with Intuitive, Interactive Search Results

Microsoft Bing is rolling out five new upgrades to search that target to evolve SERPs beyond a list of links to provide users with a richer experience. One thing is similar in these new Bing updates – they all combine visually rich imagery with text-based information in a single view.  The new format is said to deliver information quickly and in a way that allows searchers to find what they need without scanning large blocks of text.

Microsoft Bing’s Upgraded Search Features Include:

• Intuitive highlighting of content
• Integrated visual search
• Expandable carousels
• Infographic-like SERPs
• Richer results for local queries

Let’s talk about these latest updates in more detail that was announced today.

Intuitive Highlighting

Microsoft Bing is upgrading SERPs so they adapt to intuitively highlight content the searcher is engaging with. Bing provided an example to demonstrate that how this feature works with search results for recipes. Below you can see in the picture that how Bing provides the initial results in a unique card-based format.

When a user clicks on any results, Bing extracts the information related to the recipe and displays it inline without leaving the search results page.

The expanded view contains information such as:

• Ingredient list (with possible substitutions)
• Calories per serving
• User reviews
• A drop-down menu to scale the recipe to a specific number of servings
• Nutritional information

To get the step-by-step cooking instructions searchers will still have to visit the actual web page. Recipes are just one example. This feature may also be applied to other types of searches such as home improvement and creative projects.

Integrated Visual Search

While browsing through the card-based results, as shown above, users will have the option to instantly conduct a visual search to find similar-looking items. Microsoft Bing has integrated the visual search button into these results, which allows users to conduct an image-based query with just a click.

According to Microsoft Bing:

“While exploring these visual results, you might see something you like but is difficult to describe with words. That’s why we’ve also integrated visual search into the experience, so you can quickly search using an image. For example, in the “DIY coffee table” result, you may see wicker baskets that fit the table’s look and feel. With just a click, you’ll get image results of similar-looking items, and can directly click off to retailer sites to purchase a particular basket if you’re sold on it.”

Expandable Carousels

Bing is upgrading its carousels with a feature that displays additional information when users hover over the results. You can see in this search for movies how hovering over a result shows details such as when the film was released, a synopsis, and review scores from multiple sources.

Infographic Inspired SERPs

An upgrade that Microsoft Bing provides “style and substance” presents results in an infographic-like experience that combines text and imagery.

“For example, you can search for broad topics like “Kenya” or “giraffes”. Results for these move beyond a dense summary of the results and blue links and aggregate the top text and visual results into an infographic-inspired experience. Curiosity piqued? Click off to sites that contain more detail or explore other related topics.

Many of these features are now live in Microsoft Bing. I think bing users should be excited about these new upgrades. Stay tuned for future updates that are coming in the next couple of months with more visually immersive experiences across the web.

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Microsoft Bing Clarity A Free-To-Use Analytics Tool

Microsoft Clarity A Free-To-Use Analytics Tool

In October 2020, Microsoft launched a new analytics tool, called Microsoft Clarity, that is free and easy to use for every website and blog. After receiving a great response from users, now Microsoft has integrated Clarity with Bing Webmaster Tools. You can use Clarity to make your website as easy to use as possible, which can help grow your business or increase the viewership of your blog.

What Is Microsoft Clarity?

Clarity is a free-to-use analytics tool that helps webmasters and site owners to understand how users are behaving on your website through key features such as session replays and heatmaps, as well as an insights dashboard.

How To Install Microsoft Clarity?

If you want to install Clarity, you can now do so in Bing Webmaster Tools. You can find a beta link to Clarity on the bottom left of the navigation bar in Bing Webmaster Tools. That loads this page:

Then you have to accept the terms: (Add Site Microsoft Clarity)

Add the Clarity script to your website:

SEOBizWorld Successfully Added To Clarity Projects:

After you add your website, it will take around 2 – 4 hours to get access to Clarity Dashboard. According to Microsoft “You can expect to see further developments in our Webmaster Tools integration in the coming months.”

Google Analytics Integration:

Microsoft Clarity Features:

Heatmaps

Heatmaps provide a visual way to examine large numbers of user interactions that help you to see user behaviors and trends.

Session Playback

Session Playback helps to discover novel patterns in session recordings like “rage clicks,” “dead clicks,” and “excessive scrolling,” and you can use these classifications to filter your sessions as well.

Insights Dashboard

You can use the Insights Dashboard to view your website performance. You will be able to see how many users were clicking on non-existent links or how many people scrolled up and down a page in search of something they couldn’t readily find.

Source: Microsoft Blog

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Bing Announced The New Evergreen BingBot User-Agents

Bing is going to rolling out user-agents for BingBot. According to the announcement, Bing is updating its user agents to be dynamic based on the version of the browser it is using to crawl your web site. The new Microsoft Edge as the engine to run JavaScript and render web pages. With this change, Bing will start the transition to a new user-agent for websites which require it for rendering and then gradually update for all sites.  

Today’s Bingbot User-Agents:

• Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)
• Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0
• Mozilla/5.0 (Windows Phone 8.1; ARM; Trident/7.0; Touch; rv:11.0; IEMobile/11.0; NOKIA; Lumia 530) like Gecko (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)

Following are the New Evergreen Bingbot user-agents

Desktop:

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36 Edg/W.X.Y.Z

Mobile

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Mobile Safari/537.36 Edg/W.X.Y.Z (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)

According to Bing: We are committing to regularly update our web page rendering engine to the most recent stable version of Microsoft Edge thus making the above user agent strings to be evergreen. Thus, “W.X.Y.Z” will be substituted with the latest Microsoft Edge version we’re using, for example “80.0.345.0″.

How to test your web site?

Bing want you to install the new Microsoft Edge to test your website is working fine with it. If your site is working fine then you don’t need to worry about the change. Furthermore, you can register your site on Bing Webmaster Tools to get insights about your site. If there is an issue, Bing will investigate your site with new upcoming tools based on the new rendering engine. 

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Bing Make It Simple To Verify Site Using Domain Connect

If you want to submit your website to Bing and review performance report or get access diagnostic tools, you need to verify the ownership of that website in Bing Webmaster Tools.  There are three verification options to verify your site in Webmaster Tools which are:

• Option 1: XML file authentication
• Option 2: Meta tag authentication
• Option 3: Add a CNAME record to DNS

For option 1 and 2, webmasters need to get the access of site and put verification code in the source code and complete the verification process. For option 3, users can verify website in Bing Webmaster Tools without having access the source code. According to recent announcement “We announce the support for Domain Connect open standard that will allow webmasters to seamlessly verify their site in Bing Webmaster Tools.”

What is Domain Connect?

Domain Connect is an open standard that makes it easy for a user to configure DNS for a domain running at a DNS provider (e.g. GoDaddy, 1&1 Ionos, etc) to work with a Service running at an independent Service Provider (e.g. Bing, O365, etc). The protocol presents a simple experience to the user, isolating them from the details of DNS settings and its complexity.

Bing Webmaster Tools verification using Domain Connect is now live for users whose domain is hosted with following DNS providers:

• Plesk
• 1&1 Ionos
• GoDaddy
• Media Temple

This capability will be constantly integrated with other DNS providers that support Domain Connect open standard. When adding website to Webmaster Tools, the system will automatically determine that the site is hosted on a DNS provider who has integrated the Domain Connect solution with Bing Webmaster Tools.

How To Use Domain Connect Feature To Verify Your Site in Bing Webmaster Tools?

Step 1: Open a Bing Webmaster Tools account

You can open a free Bing Webmaster Tools account by going to the Bing Webmaster Tools sign-in or sign-up page. You can sign up using Microsoft, Google or Facebook account.

Step 2: Add Your Website

Once you have a Bing Webmaster Tools account, you can add sites to your account. You can do so by entering the URL of your site into the Add a Site input box and clicking Add.

Step 3: Check if your site is supported for Domain Connect protocol

When you Add the website information, Bing Webmaster Tools will do background check to identify if that domain/ website is hosted on DNS provider that has integrated Domain Connect solution with Bing Webmaster Tools. Following view will show in case the site is supported.

In case the site is supported for Domain Connect feature, then user will see the default verification options as mentioned in  the above process.

Step 4: Verify DNS Provider Credentials

On click of Verify, user will be redirected to DNS provider site. Webmaster should sign-in using the account credentials associated with domain/ website under verification.

After successful sign-in, users can verify site by Bing webmaster tools within few seconds. In some cases, it may take longer for DNS provider to send the site ownership signal to Bing webmaster tool service.

Using the new verification options will significantly reduce the time taken and simplify the site verification process in Bing Webmaster Tools. We encourage you to try out this solution and get more users for your sites on Bing via Bing Webmaster Tools.

This new feature will help to reduce the time and steps to take for verify website in Bing Webmaster Tools. If Domain Connect feature is not supported, then users will see the default verification options which include XML file authentication and Meta tag authentication.

Bing is still continue to work for simplify the site verification process and help SEOs to easily add and verify their site in Webmaster Tools. So if you are facing any problem using Domain Connection solution, you can raise a service ticket with support team.

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Bing Describes How To Submit URLs Via Webmaster API

There is no doubt about that Google is continuously updating and make a lots of changes in Search Ranking Algorithm. I am seeing some early signs of Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update on 1st August. Some SEOs and webmasters are chattering about this unconfirmed update at WebmasterWorld thread.  Here I like to share some screenshots that what SEOs and Webmaster are saying:

There is no doubt about that Google is continuously updating and make a lots of changes in Search Ranking Algorithm but some updates are confirmed officially like “March 2019 Core Update” but there were many updates which are not confirmed such as December 15th 2018. So from till now Google has not confirmed any core update today but who knows.

Search Engine Monitoring Tools Tracking Google Algorithm Update:

MozCast:

SERP Metrics:

Algoroo:

Advanced Web Rankings:

AccuRanker:

RankRanger:

Cognitive SEO:

SEMRush:

I will suggest to all SEOs, Webmasters and Site Owners that keep monitor your daily traffic in Google Analytics and manually check your Keywords Ranking. If you see any changes please share it here.

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Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update On 1st April

After launched new extension for desktop and mobile devices, Bing Webmaster Guidelines are going to update said by Frederic Dubut who works as web ranking and quality project manager at Bing. He tweeted on July 30 and asked that “SEO friends! I’m kicking off an effort to refresh our Bing Webmaster Guidelines, both the spirit and the letter. Any shady tactics you think are not penalized enough? Any feedback on the document itself? ”

In Frederic Dubut’s tweet, he is specifically asking to SEOs and Webmasters that what are the “shady tactics” that they think should be more strictly penalized. If Bing receives a strong response regarding a specific topic, they will include in the Bing Webmaster Guidelines that could reflect in its ranking algorithm. You can read the current webmaster guidelines OR you can respond him on his tweet with your thoughts.

I think it’s a great opportunity for Search Engine Optimization Experts to participate in shaping the rules that govern Bing’s crawling, indexing and ranking by asking the company to publicly address areas of concern and disseminate up-to-date best practices. Forum discussion at Twitter.

Bing Ads Launched New Extension for Desktop and Mobile Devices

On May 21, Bing published a blog post and explained how to submit URLs through API. It’s a good news for SEOs and Webmasters that you don’t need to wait for BingBot to crawl your website and index pages.

You can just submit those links to Bing to get your content immediately indexed as soon as your content is published! They  also published a step by step by guide for how to set-up the adaptive URL submission API.

Bing said that “In the last few months we have seen rapid adoption of this capability with thousands of websites submitting millions of URLs and getting them indexed on Bing instantly.“

Step 1: Generate an API Key

Webmasters need an API key to be able to access and use Bing Webmaster APIs. This API key can be generated from Bing Webmaster Tools by following these steps: 

• Sign in to your account on Bing Webmaster Tools. In case you do not already have a Bing Webmaster account, sign up today using any Microsoft, Google or Facebook ID.
• Add & verify the site that you want to submit URL for through the API, if not already done.
• Select and open any verified site through the My Sites page on Bing Webmaster Tools and click on Webmaster API on the left-hand side navigation menu.

• If you are generating the API key for the first time, please click Generate to create an API Key. Else you will see the key previously generated.

Note: Only one API key can be generated per user. You can change your API key anytime; change is taken by the system within 30 minutes.

Step 2: Integrate with your website

 You can any of the below protocols to easily integrate the Submit URL API into your system. 

JSON Request Sample

POST /webmaster/api.svc/json/SubmitUrl?

apikey=sampleapikeyEDECC1EA4AE341CC8B6 HTTP/1.1

Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8

Host: ssl.bing.com

 {

“siteUrl”:”http:\/\/example.com”,

“url”:”http:\/\/example.com\/url1.html”

}

XML Request Sample

POST /webmaster/api.svc/pox/SubmitUrl?apikey=sampleapikey341CC57365E075EBC8B6 HTTP/1.1

Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8

Host: ssl.bing.com 

 <SubmitUrl xmlns=”http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Microsoft.Bing.Webmaster.Api”>

<siteUrl>http://example.com</siteUrl>

<url>http://example.com/url1.html</url>

</SubmitUrl>

If the URL submission is successful then you will receive an http 200 response. This ensures that your pages will be discovered for indexing. If Bing webmaster guidelines are met then the pages will be crawled and indexed in real time.

If you have any trouble during the integration, you can reach out bwtsupport@microsoft.com to raise a service ticket.

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Bing Ads Launched New Extension for Desktop and Mobile Devices

Find Out How Search Industry Celebrating Earth Day 2019 ?

Earth Day is a worldwide event celebrated on April 22. On this special day, the search industry also celebrating with some earth related logos and themes. Google created awesome Doodle with animated video, Bing has a beautiful home page, Yahoo also created a special logo and even Baidu displayed a GIF logo.

Below you can see the current logo from Google, Bing, Yahoo and Baidu, but the animated video from Doodle is amazing, which covers the Wandering Albatross, Coastal Redwood, Paedophryne Amauensis, Amazon Water Lily, Coelacanth, and Deep Cave Springtail.

Google:

Bing:

Yahoo:

Baidu:

Here is an amazing video on the Google’s homepage I am Feeling Lucky button yesterday on Easter:

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Google Doodle Celebrates World Earth Day 2019

Akshaya Pragadeeshram is Program Manager at Microsoft, said in a blog post that Bing Ads launched new Action Extensions for desktop and mobile devices, which helps advertisers to utilize call-to-action buttons with text ads. According to Bing Ads, this new Extension allows advertisers to achieve an average of 20% increase in CTR (click-through rate), when they served Actionable Extensions in their ads.

This new ads extension is now released globally on both PC and mobile devices. There are up to 70 pre-defined Action Extensions are available in all Bing Ads platform’s with supported languages.

PC Layout:

Mobile Layout:

Mobile Layout Action Extension With Sitelinks:

Bing Ads Highlighted Key Details About Action Extensions:

• Clicks on Action Extensions will be charged the same cost-per-click (CPC) as clicks on the ad headline.
• Action Extensions can be shown with other ad extensions, including sitelinks.
• Action Extensions can be associated at the account, campaign, or ad group level, where the lowest level takes precedence. There is a limit of 20 associations per level.
• The URL fields are all optional. If the URL is not provided for the Action Extension, we will use the ad’s URLs (or the URL at the keyword level, if provided) as the landing page when the call-to-action button is clicked.

You can create Action Extensions via Bing Ads online, using the bulk account management tool, through the Bing Ads campaign management service API, or the bulk API. Action Extensions are available in all Bing Ads markets on both desktop and mobile devices.

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Bing Update: Text-to-Speech, Intelligent Answers, Visual Search