According to a recent post on WebProNews, Microsoft has admitted a problem with Bing whereby pages marked as NoIndex or NoFollow are being ignored by the ‘MSN Bot’ when crawling a website.

NoIndex and NoFollow Meta Tags can be used to advise search engine spiders to avoid indexing specific web pages. There are a number of reasons why you might want to use these tags, such as preventing duplicate content, or private or non essential web pages from being indexed.

The industry standard NoIndex and NoFollow Meta Tags are recognised by all major search engines including Google and Yahoo. Therefore this problem only appears to be affecting Bing.

According to Brett Yount from Bing’s webmaster team, Bing have acknowledged that there is a problem.

“This is a known issue we are working quickly to resolve. If you have pages you would like permanently removed from our index, please send me a mail to bwmc@microsoft.com with your domain name and “MSNBot ignoring robots tags” in the subject line. Please also include the URLs in the body of the message. You may use an * wildcard for any directories such as, http:example.com/ wrongdirectory/*

Normally, I would request that you fill out a content removal request, however, since this is a problem on our side, I’ll do the leg work for you.”

So, if you have pages within your website that are using these NoIndex Meta Tags, I would strongly recommend checking these pages in the Bing search results and taking appropriate action to establish if they have been indexed in error.

If you would like further information on how to prevent search engine spiders from indexing your web pages I would recommend you review other methods supported by the Robots Exclusion Standard.

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A recent report from analysts Citigroup has compared the search results for Google, Yahoo and Bing in an effort to determine which search engine produces the most accurate results.

The study compared 200 queries and concluded that Google was significantly better at returning the most relevant results compared to Yahoo and Bing. The results are very convincing with Google returning the most relevant result 71% of the time, compared with Bing at 49% and Yahoo! 30%.

Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney explains their methodology for the study:

“Over the past two weeks, we conducted 200 queries across the three major Search engines – Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Most of the queries we picked came from Google Zeitgeist, Microsoft’s xRank and Yahoo! Buzz, along with some personal queries. These queries spanned multiple categories, including Entertainment, Health, Local, News, Retail, Sports, Travel and Other.

After conducting the same query across all three search sites, we picked a winner based on: 1) relevancy of the organic search results; and 2) robustness of the search experience, which included factors such as image and video inclusion, Search Assist, and Site Breakout.

It’s interesting to note that Bing actually beat Google in 2 categories: Health & Travel, while Yahoo really struggled”

Google should be pleased with this result but shouldn’t be complacent.

Bing is well on the way to becoming a big competitor. With this weeks announcement that the much hyped Microsoft/Yahoo merger has now been finalised and the apparent decision for Yahoo to be powered by Bing, it will be interesting to see what happens in the search engine war over the next 12 months.

What do you think?

Is Google still your favourite search engine of choice or do you prefer the new search experience provided by Bing. As ever, your comments would be appreciated.

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Here is the third Google video from their webmaster educational series – “Speeding up in a Slowdown”.

In this video Howard Steinberg, Director of Business Development at Urbanspoon, describes how he tested Google AdSense for mobile applications.

If you develop iPhone or Android applications, Google are keen to let you know about the beta launch of AdSense for mobile applications. Participants in the beta will be able to display text and image ads in their mobile applications to earn revenue.

According to Google they have seen positive results in the trials, and are excited to roll this out to new developers to continue supporting the growth of mobile applications.

Visit Google’s New Microsite to learn more about AdSense for mobile applications, see their beta requirements, or Sign Up. If you’re selected to participate in the beta, Google will be in touch with you shortly with next steps for getting started.

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But only for a day, before falling to just over 3% market share, according to new Hitwise data.

Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, was officially launched on 3rd June.

According to Robin Goad, Research Director at Hitwise UK, “traffic peaked on June 3, when Bing was the eighth most visited website in the UK (ahead of all BBC properties, but one behind MSN UK) and the third ranked search engine, accounting for 10.8% of the UK market.”

“Since the initial launch hype, traffic to the site has declined. However, one positive sign is that average visit time has increased to eight and a half minutes. This is half of Google UK’s number but only slightly below Yahoo! UK Search, implying that the people are actually spending time on the site and using it rather than just visiting out of curiosity.”

Have you tried Bing yet?

Your comments would be appreciated.

Does Microsoft’s new search engine have the ability to challenge Google?

Microsoft’s new search engine Bing, has just been launched. Bing is now available at www.bing.com and is a direct replacement for Live Search/MSN.

Microsoft is expected to spend $80 million to $100 million on marketing Bing and is more likely to take market share from Yahoo rather than Google.

Whether Bing will ultimately succeed or not, it will help to push Google into continuing to develop their search engine product, and the new pay per click competition will ensure that Google doesn’t get too greedy.

According to Microsoft’s, Steve Ballmer, “Bing is a new kind of search that goes beyond traditional search engines to help you make faster, more informed decisions. It will do this by combining a great search engine (with powerful new features to improve your results for any query), more organised results, and unique tools to help you make important decisions. We think of Bing as a Decision Engine.”

“So why did we pick Bing as the new brand name? We needed a brand that was as fresh and new as our approach. It needed to be like the product — optimised for the Internet. A name that was memorable, short, easy to spell, and that would function well as a URL around the world. We like Bing because it sounds off in our heads when we think about that moment of discovery and decision making — when you resolve those important tasks. And frankly, the name needed to clearly communicate that this is something new, to invite you to come back, to re-introduce you to our new and improved service and encourage you to give it a try.”

So, how is Bing different from Google?

• Bing is not dramatically different from Google, but some people have found its results more accurate.
• In addition to the standard search results, Bing shows more detailed information about a specific web page when you hover your mouse pointer at the right side of the search results. This is a great feature.
• Bing will display fewer results if it is certain that it has understood your intent. The search for “Facebook”, for example, brings up just one result.
• Some search results are divided into categories. For example, if you search for “Elton John” you will be offered results in the categories Photo, Songs, Lyrics, Tickets, Concerts, Musical, Las Vegas and Albums.
• Bing features a different background image every day.
• Bing’s video search lets you watch videos without leaving the search engine.
• Bing appears able to handle misspellings reasonably well and returned the correct results for our test.

All in all I think this is a great effort from Microsoft and a major improvement on the previous Live Search/MSN versions.

Why not see for your self and take a test drive now at www.bing.com.

If you would like further information on how you can improve your search engine results, visit our Professional SEO page now!