Publish your content in Bing News and Windows feed... if you are lucky enough
Recently I wrote about how to Publish your content in Google News on Android, iOS and news.google.com. Looking further I checked if there is such an option in other search engines like… Bing.
Bing is also offering aggregated News in Bing News along with serving this through integration into the Windows operating system.
Users can get their personalized content through Bing and Microsoft Start, Windows, Edge and Office.
Despite that Bing doesn’t have the same reach as Google, the Windows operating system, through enabled and pinned into the Start menu/taskbar, weather/news widgets, may give you that reach.
If a particular user is interested in food recipes, he will be suggested with more related content, so why not suggest ours as well?
Google utilise specific Publisher Center to add content to their aggregated news feeds. Bing (Microsoft) operates a Bing PubHub to aggregate information from various sources.
The Bing PubHub is integrated into Bing Webmaster Tools, however, the link is not ordinarily visible, hence its existence is not so obvious for an ordinary user.
https://www.bing.com/webmasters/pubhub
Sometimes it will appear in recommended section when we head to the Bing Webmaster Tools homepage.
Before we start, it’s worth knowing that to publish in Bing PubHub you do not necessarily need to serve news. Both news and non-news sites are supported. Very similar to Google Publisher Center, however PubHub Guidelines for Publishers clarify what eligibility criteria need to be met for non-news publishers.
As with Google, here with Bing, we can easily utilise website RSS to spread our content.
I will recall once again my post from 2021 stating why RSS is not dead and still matters.
Pre-setting up
There are a couple of things that need to be set along the road.
- Content submission is where we will utilise our website RSS feed.
- Accountability and transparency is where we need to state clearly who is the publisher, which includes a physical address and email address.
- Content rights and responsibility is about the content and our right to it. If you publish or repost, somebody’s content without obtaining permission, which includes not only text but also images, this may cause you a problem. It’s better to address this before to avoid (pricey) disappointment later.
- Attribution and representation.
Setting up
Let’s head to Bing PubHub in Webmaster Tools.
Site Info
Let’s state the name, language in which the website is presented and the region.
The first website I add was for Yummy Recipes UK where, along with my friend, who is creating the content, we publish (“with some level of frequency”) delicious and easy recipes for everybody.
Our intended reach (Audience) is Global, but also National. Not necessarily Regional or Local, and not industrial. We tick relevant tick boxes.
Adding our URLs
Here we will select Link type as RSS and paste a link to our feed. We are using Hugo to build our website, our RSS is presented in the root directory as an /index.xml file.
https://yummyrecipes.uk/index.xml
If we got more feeds or sources, we can also add them here, like a sitemap.
https://yummyrecipes.uk/sitemap.xml
Contacts
The last part is to specify business name and the person of contact. As a content manager, I specified myself as a first in line for a matter of Bing PubHub.
Once all are filled, we finish by pressing the Agree and Submit button.
Now it’s waiting time.
Microsoft or Bing team do not give us a timescale like it was when we add a website to Google’s Publisher.
Follow
Despite this feature being very similar to Google News there is no direct option to follow your source so you cannot see how this will look on your device. All are curated by the Microsoft algorithm.
Rejection
When you set up your source, surprisingly there is no option to specify under which category you fall with your site.
If at some stage your addition will not be added, there is no forum or way to contact to discuss that apart from just single email address with a disclaimer. Your email, as you may suspect, will remain without an answer.
“Please contact customer support with any questions about these guidelines. However, please note that we are unable to provide feedback on how to improve your site for evaluation.”
My addition was no different.
On 27th February 2023, it has been rejected with vogue text:
The site application has been rejected. Please resolve the issues communicated in the email and submit the form again. Click on the edit form below to make the necessary changes.
The problem is that no email has been received.
The annoying part was the text on top of the button stating “Click on the edit form below to make the necessary changes”. It will be nice if the button was active!
When you hover over the button you will have a tooltip saying:
You can re-submit your site for verification after 15:05 on March 29, 2023,
No email, no explanation and you need to wait for over a month before you can do anything.
I am not surprised that webmasters don’t give a toss about Bing and its Webmaster tools. Here, even their AI Chatbot will not help change that. Sorry Microsoft, but you are still missing the point. I think Bing, same as it was with Internet Explorer shall end and come back resurrected as a new product to have at least a chance to exist, as it happens with Chromium-based Microsoft Edge.
Once again, despite this text:
Please contact customer support with any questions about these guidelines. However, please note that we are unable to provide feedback on how to improve your site for evaluation.
I decided to contact them, not asking about the reason for rejection but about the email which I didn’t receive.
Patiently waited until the 29th of March after where, after not changing anything (as I didn’t know exactly what was the problem and the reason for rejection in the first place), resubmitted the site again.
Sadly, I don’t hold a lot of hope for this. Due to a lack of any feedback on my email, I don’t understand how this tool is even in use by anybody.
Since my resubmission at 6:41 am on March 30, 2023 nothing changed and the submission stuck at Awaiting for Approval for a month and a half and counting.
Despite that I still don’t know if the site will be accepted, it’s worth it for you, the owner of the website on which you publish some useful content, to see and evaluate new ways to promote and reach a wider audience.
It doesn’t cost anything so why not try?
If you decided to do this, let me know in the comments below how it goes. Any success stories would be appreciated. In the meantime, if my addition will be added or rejected or somehow I will get an email back from Microsoft, I will share an update with you all.
