Frédéric Dubut, web ranking and quality project manager for Bing, is embarking on a journey to refresh the company’s webmaster guidelines.

“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?” Dubut tweeted on July 30.

Why we should care

Dubut’s tweet specifically asks for marketers and publishers to call out the “shady tactics” that they think should be more strictly penalized. If Bing receives a strong response regarding a specific topic, it could be included in the updated guidelines and reflected in its ranking algorithm.

Dubut also asked for feedback on the Bing Webmaster Guideline document itself. This is an opportunity for SEOs to take part 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.

More on the story

• You can leave feedback directly on Dubut’s tweet, by reaching out to the @BingWMC Twitter alias, on Facebook or by clicking the feedback button located at the bottom right-hand corner of the Webmaster Guidelines site. Dubut also told Search Engine Land that people can speak directly to Bing staff at conferences as well.
• So far, replies to Dubut’s tweet have included requests in a range of topics such as duplicate content, interstitial ads and pop-ups, subdomain leasing and the mobile-friendliness of the Webmaster Guideline site itself.
• Bing’s Webmaster Tools has also been brought up in the comments a number of times. Dubut seems receptive to that feedback as well, asking, “Any specific features you’d like to see?” and, “What are the things that you don’t use and would never use?”
• The WayBack Machine’s Changes feature indicates that only minor changes have been made to Bing’s Webmaster Guidelines between 2018 and 2019.