Can You Ping on MSN?
Microsoft's MSN features a collection of websites offering news and entertainment. Most MSN pages feature a search box where visitors search the site or the broader Web using the search engine Bing. To alert the Bing spider to your site so that it's found in a search on MSN, use a Sitemap and regularly ping update services.
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MSN and Bing
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MSN doesn't have its own search engine. Instead it uses Bing, a general search engine also owned by Microsoft. Like Google and other search engines, Bing uses a spider to "crawl" the Internet and find pages for its index. Although the spider is very efficient at finding new and updated Web pages using links from other sites, your site may be more easily found if you "ping" it with your Sitemap or updates.
Sitemaps
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A Sitemap is an XML file containing the URLs of a website's important pages. Major search engines including Bing use Sitemaps to help them find and update Web content. To create a Sitemap, either write it manually in a text editor, generate it automatically using a plug-in for WordPress or Drupal or use a website like XML-Sitemaps.com. After the Sitemap is uploaded to your Web server, you should submit it using Bing Webmaster Tools or by entering the following address in your browser's address bar:
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=www.YourSite.com/sitemap.xml
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Updates
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While Bing itself doesn't accept direct "pings" or updates when you create a new page, update services fill the gap by quickly listing your new pages so that Bing and other search engines can find and follow the links. Most blogging and content management software include a function to ping multiple update services automatically. Sites such as Ping-o-Matic or Pingler send updates to dozens of update services at a time using a Web form. Also periodically update and resubmit your Sitemaps file, incorporating your new pages.
Best Practices
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To keep Bing updated on your site and its pages, add your site to the Bing Webmaster Tools database. Using Webmaster Tools you can submit your Sitemaps, find out whether the Bing spider has crawled your site and see which pages are causing crawl errors. Only ping update services with new or updated content, as excessive pings may harm the search rankings of a page that hasn't changed.
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References
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