Bing stops accepting Sitemap pings, switch to IndexNow instead
Bing (and Yandex) no longer wants to be notified of updates to your website’s XML sitemap file anymore. Send the updated URLs directly with IndexNow API instead.
Search engines
Google’s unfair performance advantage in Chrome
Google Chrome gives Google Search (when set as the default search engine) a network performance-boost over competing search engines.
How to stop Bing ranking XML feeds over your webpages
Bing preferred XML and machine-readable file formats over human-readable ones in its search results. How link canonicalization helped rectify the situation.
Yahoo!, AOL, OneSearch biased in favor of parent company’s websites
Verizon Media’s search engines promises “unbiased” search results, but serves results clearly favoring the company’s media websites over competitors.
Use different search providers for every search with RandSearch
Set your web browser to search with RandSearch. It uses a random search engine to fulfill your searches. Get different perspectives, ideas, and results.
Ctrl blog was unavailable in Bing Search for a month
Ctrl blog was nowhere to be found with Bing in September. I can only speculate on what I did to offend Bing. Link canonicalization may be to blame.
Firefox to reintroduce OpenSearch discovery and install in Firefox 61
Firefox removed the ability to add new search engines with OpenSearch when it removed the separate search field. It has now restored OpenSearch discovery support.
Robot discrimination: No robots allowed, except Googlebot
A survey shows how many websites discriminate against and block all search engines and spiders except GoogleBot in their /robots.txt files.
Explore some of the lesser-known robots.txt search directives
I’ve analyzed dozens of search engines and the robots.txt file of millions of websites. Here are my list of some of the more arcane robots.txt directives.
Search with smiles :)
When a 🍔 isn’t a ‘hamburger.’ Search engines have problems understanding what we mean when searching with emojis characters.
Location and date – targeting keywords hiding in plain sight
Stop losing search-engine referrals by forgetting to include blindingly obvious keywords like your business’ location and dates.
Why is Google Search so popular across the European market?
I speculate on how Google Search won over the multilingual European market and came to dominate search across Europe.
Apple pushes to decentralize search engines in Safari
Safari 8 wants you to use more than one search engine. Its address field auto-discovers and installs OpenSearch providers to get you where you’re going quicker.
Opera Extension: Search with a random provider every time
Improve your online privacy and get exposed to new things by randomizing which search engine you for all your searches. Powered by an extension for Opera.