New Bing 'Best Match' Experience in the Coming Weeks

Microsoft has wrapped up the global roll-out of Bing on June 3rd, 2009. However, this doesn't mean that the Redmond company is finished with the successor of Live Search. While the long-term evolution of Bing is a given fact, the software giant is also cooking short-term changes in response to how the search engine performs following launch. One area of Bing that will be improved in the next few weeks is the “Best match” section. According to the Redmond company, enhancements are related to the way the search engine understands to display websites that are considered the best possible match to end-users' search terms.

“In Bing, certain navigational queries will provide a ‘Best match’ result at the top. This result also provides several deep links and various contact information associated with the site. Currently, we are working to develop a better support experience for this feature. We hope to have it online within the next few weeks and we will make an announcement when the specific support is available,” Brett Yount, Bing Webmaster Center, revealed.

One aspect worth noticing is that “Best match” is a feature available only to the US version of Bing. In order to leverage the “Best match” results, users in various markets around the world need to change the country settings in Bing to United States. Once they do, the websites identified as “Best match” results will be featured at the top of the list of results returned to end-users, just one per query. The top position means that users will get streamlined access to the main links on the website and also the possibility to use some of the features on that specific online destination from Bing, the search in Google, for example.

Until the Bing “Best match” improvements drop, “If you need to make changes, please do not use the Content Removal Form. Using that form only removes the full URL from our index and it could have a negative impact on your site. Instead, please contact bestmatc at microsoft.com and we will route it to the team,” Yount added.