Fabrice Canal, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Bing, gave a keynote presentation at the PubCon conference in Austin, Texas.
A packed room of conference attendees listened enthusiastically as Canaly discussed the topic of SEO for the new AI-powered search engine Bing.
As the head of the product development team, the public highly anticipated Canal’s vision for the new and improved Bing search engine.
His presentation provided valuable information on optimizing websites for the new Bing search experience. Additionally, we learned that Bing Webmaster Tools would soon retain traffic data from Bing’s AI Chat.
SEO Recommendations For Bing AI Search
Canal suggests sticking to the same SEO playbook for optimizing content for Bing’s AI experience, as it is still early days for AI search.
In addition, he recommends monitoring Bing communications and data to make adjustments as the new Bing continues to change the way people use Search.
During his PubCon keynote, Canaly highlighted the importance of SEO professionals in guiding Bing search crawlers to high-quality content.
SEO will never be “dead,” and Bing needs the assistance of SEO specialists to prepare material for its new AI-driven algorithms, claims Canal.
Lastmod Tag
Canal emphasizes the importance of setting the last modified tag to the date the page was last modified, not the date the sitemap was generated.
The final mod tag is an HTML attribute that indicates when a web page or URL has received significant changes.
This tag is utilized in sitemaps to help search engines like Bing know when the page was last updated.
LastMod also helps search engines identify and access the latest content available.
Bing will show the updated date in search results if the last modified tag is present. This tells search engines that the page could have recently updated or added information they have yet to see.
Canal notes that 18% of sitemaps have incorrect final modification values, typically set to the date and time the sitemap was generated.
IndexNow
To help Bing find relevant URLs and the latest web page changes, Canalys recommends adopting IndexNow so that search engines can be immediately notified of recent changes to website content.
He also suggests having a sitemap to provide search engines with all relevant URLs and associated modification dates.
Write high-quality content first, then use semantic markup to describe the pages.
Canal says manually crawl a web page to see if its content wasted resources and energy and generated CO2.
Canale highlights another benefit of IndexNow that many people should note: energy savings.
Manually crawling a web page to see if its content wastes resources and energy and generates CO2. Therefore, using IndexNow can help reduce carbon emissions.
Canaly notes that 20 million websites have already adopted IndexNow and expects more websites, search engines, and content management systems to follow suit.
Action Items
The channel suggests several action items optimize content for Bing’s new AI-powered algorithms. These include the following:
- Join at bing.com/new
- adopt indexnow.org
- Review and correct the last modified dates of the sitemap
- Use Bing Webmaster Tools
- See what users want from Clarity.microsoft.com
Final Words
Canal’s keynote presentation at the PubCon conference in Austin, Texas, provided insight into optimizing websites for Bing’s new AI-powered search engine.
As a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft Bing, SEO professionals, and website owners highly appreciate Kanal’s expertise and guidance.
Canales emphasized the value of implementing Index Now, accurately utilizing the most recent mod tags, and producing high-quality material with semantic markup to optimize content for Bing AI search.
Additionally, he emphasized the advantages of utilizing Bing Webmaster Tools to track traffic data and make modifications to enhance visibility in search results.
SEO professionals can benefit significantly from Canaly’s recommendations and understanding of the Bing Webmaster Guidelines for adopting indexnow.org, reviewing and correcting sitemaps by last modified dates, and optimizing your content for the Bing AI-powered algorithms. Steps can be taken.
In general, Canal’s presentation gave practical advice for website owners and SEO specialists to assist them in preparing their content for Bing’s new AI search.
