Live Search Webmaster Tools

Microsoft has made new service available for webmasters wishing to know more about how their website(s) are doing in the software giant’s search engine Live.Com

The new service is called Live Search Webmaster Tools and has been publically available since the 15th November 2007. Prior to that it was in a private beta for 3 months.

Live Search Webmaster Center is a convenient portal, consolidating all of Microsoft’s information and services for webmasters in one easy-to-remember URL:

http://webmaster.live.com

SO WHAT DOES IT DO?

Microsoft’s aim is providing “key data” on what coverage etc a site has in Live Search and to make it as easy as possible for a webmaster to access this important data.

An easy way to make sure your site is going to work well with Live Search.

Both Google and Yahoo have similar tools for webmasters and now Microsoft is joining the club by providing them, and just like the other two big players Microsoft’s’ webmaster tools are specific to their own search engine.

Currently, in Live Search Webmaster Tools a webmaster can:

# View the Top 5 pages on their website according to Live Search

# Access the top 10 out going links that are performing the best in Live Search

# Access the top 10 incoming links that are performing the best in Live Search

# See if any site pages are blocked in the index.

# Validate a robots.txt file (very handy!)

# Type in a keyword and see if any of their site pages are listed under that keyword in Live.Com and if they are, when those pages were last crawled by the MSN bot.

…I have a screenshot available here of my control panel:

http://www.marctalkstech.com/images/live-webmaster.gif

SITE MAPS:

Microsoft has a Sitemap ping service available. You can either notify the Live Search crawler if you change an existing sitemap, or add a new one. Simply use this web address format:

http://webmaster.live.com/ping.aspx?siteMap=[Your sitemap web address]

OR, you can submit a sitemap directly by logging into your Live Webmaster account.

LIVE WEBMASTER TOOLS - THE FUTURE:

We are promised “tons more features” are coming that will allow webmasters to measure their performance and see if they are being successful.

Going forward Microsoft plans to add new features to Live Webmaster that are also new to the search industry as well! But they are keeping these plans under wraps at the moment.

In a recent interview at PubCon Las Vegas 2007, Jeremiah Andrick, Program Manager – Live Webmaster Team, was quoted as saying:

“… the approach we want to take is provide value ad for our customers by creating some tools that are definitely unique, that step out of the path that both Yahoo and Google, the other competitors are taking in terms of engaging with webmasters.”

In the same interview he went on to say “…as a team we want to provide some transparency with live search a kind of central point for customers to access the Microsoft environment.”

When asked on the feedback so far Nathan Buggia, Lead Program Manager – Live Webmaster Team, was quoted as saying:

“…the other feedback we get is they want more and they want it now, the tools that are around now in the industry are still in their infancy so they would like a lot more automation, a lot more data and how to make it actionable.”

You have always been able to manually submit your websites via the following URL:

http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

But for the savvy webmaster logging into their account at the Live Search Webmaster Center, is the way forward.

And there is also peer support available via the Webmaster forum:

http://forums.microsoft.com/webmaster/default.aspx?siteid=79

Don’t forget that there are other ways for Microsoft to drive traffic to your website:

Books: http://publisher.live.com
Business Listings: https://llc.local.live.com/ListingCenter.aspx
Product Information: http://productupload.live.com
Videos: http://soapbox.msn.com

Now go forth an use this information!

Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

Note: This blog entry was originally posted on www.marclironblog.com. View original post