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Talking AI & SEO Plus IndexNow Updates With Bing Fabrice Canel - EP308

April 24, 2023·47 min·4 clips

Bing discovers 70 billion new web links every single day - and most of it is completely useless.

In this Search Engine Journal Show episode, host Loren Baker interviews Fabrice Canal, a 26-year Microsoft veteran responsible for content discovery and indexing at Bing. Canal begins by explaining Bing's broader ecosystem, noting that the search engine powers Yahoo, AOL, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, and other platforms, making it larger than many realize. The conversation quickly shifts to Microsoft's rapid integration of OpenAI technology through their Prometheus model, which Canal clarifies builds on years of AI investment rather than being entirely new. He explains that the chat experience appears when Bing determines it can better serve user queries than traditional search results, and emphasizes that the system still aims to direct users to original websites rather than replace them. Canal reveals Microsoft's strategic distribution approach, embedding the chat experience across products like Skype, Teams, and Windows to reach users in their daily workflows. When discussing AI-generated content, Canal takes a pragmatic stance, arguing that search engines have used AI for decades in forms like spell checkers, and that Bing cares primarily about user satisfaction rather than content origin. However, he warns against simply cloning existing content, noting that originality and authority still matter for rankings. The interview extensively covers IndexNow, Bing's real-time indexing protocol launched two years ago, which Canal describes as revolutionary for SEO. He explains that IndexNow allows websites to instantly notify search engines of content changes, eliminating crawl quotas and enabling near-instantaneous indexing. The protocol has been adopted by 20 million websites and processes 2.5 billion URLs daily, with major sites like LinkedIn and eBay participating. Canal's ambitious goal is 60-75% internet adoption within a few years. Technical discussion includes Bing's daily discovery of 70 billion distinct links, though most prove useless, and recent improvements to sitemap processing based on last-modified dates. Canal addresses common Bing Webmaster Tools questions, explaining that RSS and Atom feeds are legitimate sitemap types that will reappear if linked from robots.txt files. The conversation touches on image generation through DALL-E integration and Bing's approach to AI-generated images in search results. Canal emphasizes that Bing's fundamental goal remains satisfying users and directing them to relevant websites, whether through traditional search results or the new chat experience. He notes that the chat feature requires content to be indexed in Bing first, maintaining the importance of traditional SEO practices. Throughout the interview, Canal stresses the rapid pace of development, describing it as 'decades of change in days' and promising more announcements to come. He encourages SEO professionals to focus on quality content, proper schema markup, and audience development while utilizing tools like sitemaps and IndexNow for technical optimization. The episode concludes with Canal directing listeners to connect via LinkedIn and Twitter rather than email, and Baker noting upcoming Search Engine Journal Show episodes focused on ChatGPT integration strategies.

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