According to Statcounter, Bing search has a market share of 2.75%, which seems minuscule when we compare it with Google which has a market share of 91%. (shoutmeloud.com)
Doesn’t sound like you’d want to use this plugin now does it?
But what about this automatic submission feature — the ability to be indexed immediately after publishing your content.
Today, we are excited to announce the release of Bing URL Submissions Plugin for WordPress as an open-source project. The plugin allows webmasters of WordPress sites to get their content easily, automatically, and immediately indexed by Bing as soon as their content is published! Who in the SEO community has not dreamed of such ability? (blogs.bing.com)
Get the Bing URL Submissions Plugin here on WordPress.org’s plugin page, or search for it in your plugin dashboard.
Let’s get into this.
- Why? Bing Has No Market Share
- It’s Simple & Automatic
- Bing Webmaster Tools account
- Can effortless bring value?
- Summary
Why? Bing Has No Market Share
I know you’re probably not using Bing search engine or care much about Bing search results at all. With a minuscule market share that’s understandable.
But a little piece of me wonders if there is some value in this. Besides, the whole process is done automatically once you install and set up the plugin.
Nothing ventured nothing gained?
It’s Simple & Automatic
Setting up the plugin is straightforward too. Install it like you would any plugin, then on the plugin settings page paste your 32-digit API key generated from Bing Webmaster Tools. If you need help with obtaining a key, Microsoft has great documentation here.
After you’ve set things up submissions will be automatic. But you can also manually submit URLs as well. The dashboard also allows you to view a list of URLs submitted, when, and the status of them within Bing’s index.
That’s nice, isn’t it? Your fancy new 2,500-word post is automatically, and instantly, indexed in Bing.
Apparently the plugin is also supposed to “watch” for post/page updates and then update Bing search engine as well. You can’t knock the idea. Rather than crawling your site for content updates, why not have your site update Bing?
Makes sense to me. It’s the “work smarter not harder” method. I hope Bing gains more market share because we need Google to have some competition in this market.
Bing Webmaster Tools account
Yes, you’ll need a Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) account and have added your website to it. Luckily that’s easy because you can use your Google account to log into BWT and even use Google to add your site (which also proves domain ownership at the same time). A little ironic, but at least it makes URL submission a breeze.
Instead of monitoring RSS, sitemaps and HTML pages to check for new pages, discover content changes and/or new outbound links, websites will notify search engines directly about relevant URLs changing on their website. (wptavern.com)
Can effortless bring value?
I mean, yea… 2.7% sounds tiny but I wonder how big the search pie is overall. If 2.7% means you get 10,000 more views a month isn’t that worth it? Especially with how effortless this plugin makes it for you to request indexing?
Now don’t get me wrong. If site owners had to do backflips while scrambling eggs and worrying about how to manage their recent submissions and constantly check their search console — hell no. I would never recommend this.
But install and go? That’s potential for some good search engine ROI, isn’t it? And what if there is some crazy conspiracy theory proof of Google taking hints from Bing’s results? Would faster indexing on Bing correlate to Google results?
I doubt it, but there is that tiny bit of mystery to it isn’t there?
Summary
In this guide I simply introduced the new Bing URL Submisisons plugin. It’s very new and yea, it’s Bing, I know you’re probably going to pass on this. But you can’t say I didn’t inform you about it.
If you’re a developer, this plugin is open-source so you can check out the code on GitHub.
I give Microsoft credit for this idea. Bloggers may, or may not benefit from it — but if they can gain some search engine marketshare, I’m all for it. More competition may force Google into better practices or at least, maybe some more transparency.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see, but my money is on nothing much changing. But one can dream can’t we?
And you want to know something funny? This post will be the first URL auto-submitted to Bing using the new plugin.
Take care,
