Bing News PubHub

Bing PubHub is a news portal launched in June 2016 by Microsoft to help news publishers expand their content’s reach. It was recently migrated to the Bing webmaster tools console.

Any publisher signed up with Bing webmasters tools can use PubHub features to extend their reach significantly and discover new readers worldwide.

Once you have submitted the site on Bing PubHub, it automatically distributes your content to Windows, Outlook, Bing search, Cortana, Office, Bing Android and iOS app users.

Some of the major benefits of having a site submitted in Bing PubHub are listed below.

• Your content is accessible across devices in different formats
• You’re informed about Bing’s latest products and features to ensure your content reaches a wider audience
• You receive updates about tips, tricks and best practices to boost the relevance of your content.

Search traffic accounts for 29% of global internet traffic and it is crucial to learn about search engines if you wish to rank higher in search engine result pages (SERPs). Microsoft Bing accounts for almost 9% of the global search engine market share and is second only to market leader Google.

2.9.2 Challenges Faced by Publishers When Submitting Their Sites to Bing PubHub

Here are some of the key challenges that publishers face when submitting their websites to Bing PubHub.

• Verification process

Before you start using Bing PubHub, you need to become a verified publisher using Bing webmaster tools. It is a simple process that includes using your Microsoft account to sign in to the webmaster tools site and then verifying your website’s ownership. While the verification process is easy, some publishers face rejection or no response at all.

• Assessment criteria

When submitting a website, publishers need to understand Microsoft’s assessment criteria.

Bing uses the following key parameters to evaluate a news website’s content.

• Newsworthiness: The website content must relate to topical events that are interesting and relevant.
• Originality: Unique content that provides distinctive facts and opinions.
• Readability: User-friendly website design that is easy to navigate and has grammatically correct and easily understandable content.
• Authority: The website cites sources and authors wherever required and attributes content properly.

• Publisher guidelines

Some publishers miss out on PubHub’s benefits owing to their lack of knowledge of PubHub’s publisher guidelines. It’s important to ensure that your site adheres to these guidelines and provides relevant and trustworthy content.

Bing webmaster tools review the approved websites at regular intervals. Hence, it is vital to publish periodically and to ensure that your site continues to meet Bing’s guidelines.

2.9.2 Does Submitting a Site to Bing PubHub Improve SEO?

Yes, it does. Bing is the second-largest search engine in the world measured by user numbers.

Whereas Google accounts for over 83% of the global market share, Bing commands a 9% market share, and this share has been growing over the years. Since 2009, Bing has also been powering Yahoo! Search. Which means that if you take into account Yahoo! and voice searches, Bing caters to one-third of online queries in the US alone.

To maximize reach, publishers should optimize for both Bing and Google, and submit to Bing PubHub as well. Relying only on Google for SEO means missing out on a significant amount of global search engine traffic.

2.9.3 How Does SEO for Bing Differ Than for Google?

While SEO’s end goal is to have your site climb the organic rankings ladder within the SERPs in the shortest possible time, Bing and Google are distinct search engines at the end of the day and need to be treated as such.

These differences include:

• Google and Bing employ slightly different algorithms to rank websites. This is evident most prominently in their platform-specific strategies. Google for instance, moved to mobile-first indexing in 2019, which means that it prioritizes mobile versions of websites for crawling and indexing. Bing on the other hand does not prioritize any platform. This has resulted in Bing performing well for desktop searches, cornering over 9% of the global desktop search market as of July 2022.

• Bing’s algorithm also gives some weight to sharing on social media, incorporating social signals in its algorithm. Bing recommends growing your social media presence organically rather than trying to game its algorithm by artificially inflating follower count.

• Google and Bing have different approaches when examining keywords. Bing still gives weightage to exact keywords while being able to recognize synonyms too, whereas Google has moved on from keyword dominance to examining both context and keywords. This is especially so following the 2019 BERT algorithm update.

For more information on the BERT algorithm update and how Google is now capable of interpreting context to enhance semantic search, see our detailed module on site architecture.

2.9.3 Meeting Bing’s Requirements

In this section, we explore the requirements — such as webmaster guidelines, eligibility criteria and website ownership verification — that publishers must meet to be considered for inclusion in the Bing news index.

Eligibility Criteria

Check the eligibility of your website to ensure it’s included in the Bing news index. Publishing frequency and content quality are considered major factors in a site’s eligibility.

We’ve listed the different website types that don’t meet the eligibility criteria below.

• Any non-news sites that focus on marketing products or services.
• Content aggregator websites that gather news from multiple websites.
• Any website that publishes content without any credible sources, such as sites that post unauthorized content or misleading information.
• News websites that publish new content infrequently.
• Sites that fail to enforce basic standards such as correct grammar, spelling and sentence structure.

Webmaster Guidelines

Bing’s webmaster guidelines are fairly extensive and we recommend checking them out in detail. However, we have briefly covered them below to give a basic understanding of Bing’s process of finding, indexing and ranking websites.

These include:

• Quality and credibility

This is one of the key criteria Bing uses when ranking pages in SERPs. A website’s authoritativeness is linked to several factors such as writer’s and editor’s reputation, citations to data sources and completeness of content.
As such, it’s important to ensure that writers’ and editors’ credentials are displayed on the site.

• News XML sitemap

Submitting a sitemap lists all of your website’s vital pages and helps Bing understand your website structure. An XML sitemaps make it easier for Bing’s crawler to discover your content and helps expedite crawling process.

• High-quality, reliable and accurate content

Bingbot follows external and internal links to find new pages and content. Unique and quality content ensures more websites link to your site which is considered as a sign of its popularity.

Verify Site Ownership

You must verify your website on Bing webmasters tool before submitting it to Bing News PubHub. You can choose any one of the four website ownership verification methods listed below.

1. DNS auto verification

The Domain Connect standard supported by Bing webmasters tools detects the DNS provider and ensures CNAME(Canonical Name) insertion. When prompted, login to your DNS account, which will automatically add CNAME to the DNS account. Once signed in to the DNS provider’s website, the verification process will be completed in a few seconds. This method is visible only if the site supports Domain Connect protocol.

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2. XML file authentication

Save the custom XML file which carries ownership verification code onto your computer by clicking on BingSiteAuth.xml. Once downloaded/saved, complete the verification process by uploading this file to the registered website’s root directory.

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3. Meta tag authentication

Simply copy the <meta /> tag with custom ownership verification code and paste it at the end of <head> section on your website’s home page in the web development IDE software. Ensure that the <head> section is followed by the <body> tag. Once done, upload the updated page with the new <meta /> tag to your website.

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4. Add CNAME record to DNS

Open your domain hosting account, edit the CNAME and enter your ownership verification code. Once done, Bing can read the updated information and verify your ownership.

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Prohibited Content

Avoid prohibited content which includes, but is not limited to

• Threats of violence
• Hate speech
• Sexually explicit material

2.9.4 Nice to Have

It used to take days or weeks for updated content to be discovered and indexed by search engines. But with the new IndexNow protocol, publishers can quickly inform search engines whenever the website content is updated.

Once IndexNow API is called, it notifies the participating search engine to quickly crawl the URLs with updated content and instantly reflect website changes in their search results.

IndexNow implementation steps are listed below.\

1. Generate API key

This minimum eight characters key is required to match the ownership of the domain. You can generate it using an online key generation tool.

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2. Host API key

The text key file hosted in the root directory of the website helps verify the ownership of submitted URLs.

3. Submit individual or bulk URLs

Webmasters allows you to submit a single or multiple URLs per API call.

Submitting individual URL

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Submitting multiple URLs 

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4. Check details of submitted URLs on Bing

You can locate the submitted URLs on the Bing webmaster tools site.

2.9.5 Avoid These Common Pitfalls

Avoid Re-Publishing Articles Under Different URLs

Using multiple URLs for the same content increases the bandwidth consumed by crawlers and decreases their crawl efficiency. Publishers should focus on using one URL for the same content and it is recommended to use a canonical tag.

Using a single URL per article strategy has the following benefits:

• Less effort (and cost) required in maintaining and updating a stand-alone page.
• Greater ranking signals for your URL.

Avoid Sharing Ambiguous Information

Website owners must provide accurate and verifiable contact information that is easy to access and includes:

• Publisher name
• Contact number
• Email address
• Physical address

After submitting the website for inclusion in the Bing news index, it may take some time for the review process to be completed. The details listed under contact information helps Bing to reach website owners in case of any questions or discrepancy regarding their website’s content or ownership.

Avoid Publishing Unauthorized Content

Publishers must take responsibility for the content on their website and ensure they have the legal right to publish it. It is crucial that the content is consistent with the site’s theme and purpose.

Avoid Sharing Unattributed Content

Stating any facts, quotes or opinions without sources can hurt content credibility and lead to a website’s rejection. A publisher must properly label any comments, reviews or opinions.

2.9.6 Actions and Takeaways

Having read this article, you should now understand the significance of Bing PubHub to reach millions of users. You can easily optimize your websites for Bing by adhering to the PubHub guidelines for the publishers.

We recommend focusing on delivering reliable and high-quality content to your readers and periodically update the website with fresh content to remain part of Bing News PubHub.