Bing Ramps up Geo-Targeting and Malware Removal Features

On April 26th, Bing announced the release of two new additions to their Webmaster Tools.

1. Malware Tool

The first new addition is the Malware Tool, which is designed to help Webmasters diagnose and remove Malware from their site. This tool alerts you if your site contains Malware and then allows you to submit and track a 'Malware Re-Evaluation Request' once you've cleaned up your site. You can find the new tool in the Reports & Data section of Bing's Webmaster Tools.

What happens when you submit a Re-Evaluation Request

"Once you submit a request, you immediately can track the status and progress inside the Malware tool. During the review period, we will perform several deep re-scans to establish if the site is truly free of malware. It is therefore important that affected site owners take the utmost care to ensure that all harmful elements – not just those listed in the list of sample URLs – have been addressed. Also, any vulnerabilities and security holes that allowed the infection to occur should be plugged.

It is important not to request a re-evaluation unless you have done this work first and established that you’re good to go: if the malware is found during the review period, the re-evaluation will fail and you will not be able to submit another re-evaluation request for some time. However, if we register several clean scans, you will get the “all clear” and the malware warning for your site will be removed from our search results pages."

For more information about the Malware tool, see the help Malware help topic in our Bing Webmaster Help Center.

2. New Geo-Targeting Feature

Along with the Malware tool Bing has released a new feature that is something worth checking out. This feature allows you to geo-tag your site in a number of different ways allowing you to target locations internationally! Here is how Bing described the different levels of geo-targeting now available to you:

At the domain level: this optio...