Understanding the role of the Bingbot in search engine optimisation

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Bingbot


To achieve SEO success, it is essential to understand the mechanisms used by search engines to crawl and index websites.

One of the key players in this process is the exploration robot, also known as the "spider". crawler ".

In this article, we take a look at the Bingbot, the crawler developed by the search engine Bing.

Bingbot

What is the Bingbot?

Le Bingbot is automated software that crawls the web to discover and index website pages. It is an integral part of the search engine ecosystem. Bingowned by Microsoft. The main purpose of the Bingbot is to detect new pages and changes to content already indexed, and to add or update them in the search engine's database.

How does the Bingbot work?

Bing's crawler operates according to a very precise algorithm:

  1. First, it visits a list of known URLs that it already has in memory.
  2. They then follow the links on these pages to discover new sites. URL.
  3. It analyses the content of each page visited to determine its subject, relevance and quality.
  4. Finally, it includes this information in the search engine index or updates existing data.

The Bingbot follows a regular exploration rhythm, but its frequency depends on several factors such as the quality of the site, its age and the number of incoming links. The more popular a site is and the more traffic it receives, the more frequently it will be visited by the crawler..

Guidelines for the Bingbot

Webmasters can give the Bingbot instructions on how it should crawl their site. To do this, they can use the "robots.txt" file at the root of their website. This file must comply with certain syntax rules if it is to be properly interpreted by the crawler:

    • Le keyword "User-agent" followed by the name of the robot concerned is used to define the rules specific to that robot (in our case, "Bingbot").
    • The keyword " Disallow "indicates directories or files that the robot should not explore.
    • The keyword " Allow "This is used to authorise the exploration of specific resources, even if they are in a prohibited directory.
    • The "Crawl-delay" keyword is used to indicate a delay between two explorations to avoid overloading the server.

Note that the Bingbot also respects the meta tags in the code HTML tags on web pages. For example, the  tells the robot that the page in question should not be indexed.

Understanding the budget crawl

The "crawl budget" corresponds to the number of pages that a crawler is prepared to explore on a given site during a specific period. This notion is important because it can have an impact on the visibility of your content in the search engine results. If certain pages are visited too infrequently or not at all by the robot, they will have little chance of appearing correctly in Bing's index.

To optimise your budget crawl and make the Bingbot's job easier, there are a few best practices to follow:

    • Make sure you offer a internal networking to make it easier for the robot to navigate.
    • Avoid broken links (404 errors), which can slow down browsing.
    • Minimise temporary redirects (302 status codes) and prefer permanent redirects (301).
    • Make sure your server has sufficient resources and responds quickly to robot requests.

The benefits of optimised SEO for the Bingbot

Although Google is now the world's leading search engine, you shouldn't overlook the importance of working on your SEO for Bing. In fact, apart from the still significant market share of this engine (especially in certain countries), there are several reasons why you should optimise your site for the Bingbot:

  1. Competition may be less fierce and it could therefore be easier to obtain high positions in the search results.
  2. Bing sometimes offers innovative and relevant features that are not available on Google, which can work in your favour. user experience successful.
  3. Some hearings (such as Windows or Internet Explorer users) are more likely to prefer Bing as their search engine.

To sum up, if you want to benefit from high-performance referencing on Bing, it is essential to have a good understanding of the role and operation of the Bingbot.

By adapting your content and SEO strategy to the specific characteristics of this crawler, you'll be doing everything you can to improve your online visibility and attract targeted, qualified traffic to your website.

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