Bing Gives Webmasters More Control Over Deep Links
Good news for webmasters who has been waiting for more flexibility over which deep links are shown in Bing’s search results. Bing has announced changes to deep link management.
You can now log into Bing Webmaster Tools and remove specific deep links that the Bing algorithm has automatically generated and selected to appear under the main search result for a website.
There have been issues in the past with which particular site links Bing has selected to show. Last year, Bing was selecting seemingly random news stories to appear as a deep link to an online newspaper, rather than selecting a much more appropriate section of the website, such as sports or obituaries (though this can be an issue on Google as well).
Now, website owners who note issues such as this in their own deep links in Bing search results simply need to login to their Bing Webmaster Tools account and use the deep links tool to block any particular deep URL from being displayed in this fashion.
You can also use the tool to prevent a deep link from showing only to specific countries or regions. This would be especially helpful for websites that serve an international audience but are still very country or region centric for actual visitors.
All blocks will automatically expire after 90 days, so you do need to remember to log into your Bing Webmaster Tools account to extend it for 90 days, if needed. There will be a reminder when you log into your Bing Webmaster Tools account that you have expiring add blocks. If you have previously blocked deep link, it is automatically been migrated to the new version of the blocking tool.
It is nice to see Bing adding additional flexibility in how they allow webmasters to handle the issue of deep links.
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