Duane Forrester announces end of Bing Webmaster Community Forum

[phranque]

Bing Webmaster Forums Shutting Down - Webmaster Blog:
http://www.bing.com/blogs/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2014/05/27/bing-webmaster-forums-shutting-down.aspx [bing.com]

...as of the end of May (or early June), we’re taking down our Bing Webmaster Community Forum, allowing us time and resources to focus energies in other directions.

If there is a problem with Webmaster Tools, or with how Bing is interacting with your website, as usual, our email support exists to offer help in legitimate cases.

Otherwise, there are a number of communities online today that house exactly the expertise folks seek. We participate at WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], and encourage folks to engage the community at large with questions.

nice "shout out" from Duane (Sr. Product Manager, Bing)...

[engine]

That's a big change over there at Bing. It takes a great deal of time an effort to look after a forum, and I'm sure we can help deal with Bing Q and A.

[JD_Toims]

Cool -- I've been hoping the Bing Forum here would pick up for a while, so I'm glad they recommended WebmasterWorld as an alternate place to post questions and share information.

[Hoople]

Ditto from me too. There is a vast archive of high quality answers here to questions that are frequently asked.

Add to that a LOT of great moderators with long memories and you have a resource that their $$$$'s could never build :-)

[aherman]

How ironic. I finally took time tonight to create an outlook account to utilize Bing's Webmaster Tools to apply to sites I've created and manage (already fully plugged-in with Google).

Immediately after I created the account, I came across the Bing blog post exhibited above; and it made me question if verifying, etc, with Bing is really worth it. And, I clicked the WebmasterWorld link to see if I could learn more.

Now, I've been here a few times before and read a bit, but I went ahead and registered tonight. That was way more than an hour ago. Between then and now I've been directed to How To Become A Hacker and Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years, plus I've taken advantage of the offer of free tools to use (thank you).

Finally, then, I've come to this thread that I actually came here to find (without even knowing it, of course). Too funny! I also get to post relevantly and fulfill the posting within the first 30 days of registering requirement.

So, may I ask: if Google likes your site(s)(evidenced by their rankings), does going through the same process with Bing offer any other true benefits? (FWIW: none of the sites I'm involved with are ecommerce).

TIA for any/all responses.

[tangor]

Bing forums worked pretty well... and was a great time sink (for just browsing... and for the Bing mods, too!). Yet I have to say that Bing doesn't (even now) inspire as many posts for "what the heck?" and "why won't this work?" and "why was I banned?" that you find elsewhere... perhaps that's because Bing is number 2... or that it generally does a better job of being transparent. (My vote is the second part).

So, if Bing forums is to close they could not have recommended a better place than webmasterworld as a second choice for Bing answers or discussions. Kudos for the recommend. Also kudos to the Bing mods who worked on their forum as professionally as any I've ever encountered.

(If not obvious, Bing is my SE of choice, G second.)

[drhowarddrfine]

@aherman The only search engine that matters is Google so if your site does well in Google then Bing, like most things Microsoft, will follow.

My company has never done anything to target Bing. We have restaurant, ecommerce and entertainment sites. Occasionally someone will tell me they looked at it and our client sites rank the same as Google but I don't care cause Bing doesn't matter.

[aherman]

@drhowarddrfine: thanks for that - I don't reckon your opinion on the subject could be made much more clear (which I truly appreciate).

[tangor]

There's follow big, and there's follow every opportunity no matter how small. Folks tend to put all their eggs in one basket. I like the concept of several baskets so my goods get delivered, even if one trips up somewhere down the line. And for those in WORLD markets the Yandex (et al) have a robust SE, there's one in Asia, there's one in South America... And market dominance can change in a heartbeat. I like horse races, not a single pony show. :)

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld, aherman!


that's a great story...

if Google likes your site(s)(evidenced by their rankings), does going through the same process with Bing offer any other true benefits?

i hope we all learn a lot more about this in the near future!

[Robert Charlton]

Looking forward to seeing you more over here, Duane.

[graeme_p]

@tangor, performance in Google and Bing is likely to be similar, and outside the US Bing is hardly used.

It is worth keeping an eye on in case of drops, penalties, bans etc. but Google is where most search engine traffic will come from.

[martinibuster]

Congratulataions WebmasterWorld! Thank you Duane!

[engine]

tangor is right, too many just rely on one source of traffic. When that source dries up, they are literally, high-and-dry.

[aherman]

Thanks for the welcome, phranque.