SEO

Bing Revamps Crawl System To Enhance Efficiency

According to a recent study by Bing, most websites have XML sitemaps, with the “lastmod” tag being the most important element of these sitemaps.

The “lastmod” tag indicates when web pages linked to the sitemap were last modified and is used by search engines to determine how often a site should be crawled and which pages to index.

However, the study also revealed that a large number of “lastmod” values ​​were set in XML sitemaps In a wrong waywhere the most common problem is identical dates in all sitemaps.

After consulting with web administrators, Microsoft discovered that the dates were set to the date the sitemap was created rather than the content was modified.

To address this problem, Bing is renewal Its crawl scheduler stack to make better use of the information provided by the “lastmod” tag in sitemaps.

This will improve crawling efficiency by reducing unnecessary crawling of unchanged content and prioritizing recently updated content.

Improvements have already begun on a small scale and are expected to begin by June in full.

Additionally, Microsoft has updated sitemap.org to improve clarity by adding the following line:

Note that the date should be set to the date the linked page was last modified, not the time the sitemap was created.

How to properly use Lastmod tag

To properly set the “lastmod” tag in your sitemap, it must be included in a tag per page in the sitemap.

The date should be in W3C Datetime format, with the most commonly used formats being YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD.

The date should reflect the last time the page was modified and should be updated regularly to ensure that search engines understand the importance and frequency of updates.

Here is an example of the code snippet:

<؟ xml version = ”1.0 ″ encoding =” UTF-8 ″؟>

http://www.example.com/

2023-01-23

Google tip: Use the Lastmod tag only after important changes

Google’s crawlers also use the “lastmod” tag, and suggestions for its use by both major search engines are similar.

Google search attorney John Mueller recently discussed the lastmod tag in the January edition of Google Hours Q&A sessions.

It should be noted that Google recommends using the “lastmod” tag only for substantial modifications, which are not mentioned in Microsoft’s blog post.

The date change in the lastmod tag can be shown after minor edits as an attempt to manipulate search snippets.

In summary

Microsoft’s recent study and efforts to improve the use of the “lastmod” tag in sitemaps will result in more efficient and effective crawling of web pages.

Publishers are encouraged to regularly update their sitemaps and lastmod tags to ensure that their pages are properly indexed and easily accessible by search engines.


Featured image: mundissima / Shutterstock

source: Microsoft

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