SEOBingBot Arrives Early [Search News Roundup]

BingBot Arrives Early [Search News Roundup]

First spotted at Webmasterworld, BingBot arrived yesterday, and Bing later confirmed a staged rollout is underway a couple days ahead of schedule.

Bing noted that you’ll continue seeing traffic in your server logs mostly from MSNBot, but will transition to (and be completely replaced by) BingBot traffic (Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0 +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) over the next few weeks.

This transition period is designed to provide time for Bing to “validate consistency, and provide you time to catch and fix potential issues with the new crawler.” Bing said sites shouldn’t experience a significant increase of the total crawl traffic from MSNBot and BingBot for any extended period.

Previously, Bing announced details for SEOs on the crawling changes:

  • Review your server configurations for crawler access. Webmaster-managed bot access control methodologies, such as robots.txt files, robots tag directives, and HTTP headers, may need to be adjusted if you normally block all crawlers except for specific, preferred search crawlers.
  • Bing will still honor all applicable robots.txt directives, including those specific to MSNBot. As of October 1st, if Bing detects separate sets of custom directives for both MSNBot and BingBot in your robots.txt file, the BingBot directives will take precedence.
  • If your sites are configured for any special handling based on user agent (such as via the .htaccess file), you’ll need to update this for BingBot so we can continue to crawl your sites as before.
  • Make sure BingBot has the same access to your site as given to MSNBot. If you previously blocked the Bing crawler but allowed the Yahoo crawler access to your site, you’ll need to allow access to BingBot to continue to be seen in Yahoo search results.

Bing also advised everyone to use standard SEO techniques and register their sites with the new Bing Webmaster Tools.

Here’s a roundup of today’s other top search headlines and tips from around the Web, sorted by category.

Search Industry

Yahoo Media Boss Disputes Censorship ClaimsBusinessInsider

IAC Boss Barry Diller Disses Ask, Says It Has “No Value”Search Engine Land

Search Engine Optimization

8 Signs of an SEO Snake Oil SalesmanYahoo Advertising Blog

Five signs your new SEO client may suckSearch Engine People

Search Advertising

New for the Google Display Network: Show ads related to demographic categoriesInside AdWords

Multicultural Spotlight: Reaching US HispanicsAdWords Agency Blog

Holiday Preparation Series: Home and Garden PPC Insights and Optimization Tips (U.S. Market)adCenter Blog

YSM/adCenter Feature Comparison #2: Distribution ControlsYahoo Search Marketing Blog

AdWords vs. AdSense: What’s the Difference?PPC Hero

Top 20 Fastest Growing Verticals In Paid Search (Aug 2010)AdGooroo

Analytics & ROI

Back To Basics: The Power of Exclusion (Part 2)Google Analytics

Social Media Marketing

Facebook Revenue Estimates Go Up–Even MorepaidContent

Yahoo Advertises on Facebook, Its Rival in ReachClickZ

Facebook’s Sandberg Says No Social Graph Ad Network, YetClickZ

Facebook Exec: All Media Will Be Personalized in 3 to 5 YearsReadWriteWeb

Facebook Now Shows Four Ads Per Page Instead of ThreeInside Facebook

Advertisers Can Now Set Lifetime Budgets for Facebook Ad CampaignsInside Facebook

7 Practical Steps To Managing A Facebook CrisisBlueGlass

The 9 Worst Ways to Use Twitter for BusinessHubSpot Blog

Twitter Shuts Out Political Advertisers, For NowClickZ

Replies and Retweets on TwitterSysomos

LinkedIn Aggregates Status Updates and Tweets in New NewsfeedMashable

Kevin Rose: Digg Turned Down $80 Million Acquisition OfferReadWriteWeb

Local & Mobile Search

The 3 Major Causes of Duplicate Listings in Local SearchSearch Engine Journal

Google Maps and the Payday Loan Industry – Strange Bedfellows?Understanding Google Maps & Local Search

Pew Research: 24% of American Adults Have Posted ReviewsUnderstanding Google Maps & Local Search

Mobile Web Growth “Stunning,” Says Opera’s New ReportReadWriteWeb

CHART OF THE DAY: Mobile Search Peaks At Night, Desktop Search Peaks In The MorningBusiness Insider

Introducing the Google Phone GalleryGoogle Mobile Blog

Explore the world with Street View, now on all seven continentsOfficial Google Blog

International Search

YouTube Strikes Deal With French Music IndustryWall Street Journal

Facebook Launches Places In AustraliaAll Facebook

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