Bing Classifies Cloaking Detection as "Single Word Query" Issue

Aug 10, 2009 - 8:30 am 1 by
Filed Under Bing Search

Last week, we reported on what appears to be more cloaking tests by Bing, where referrer data for websites are being spammed (by Microsoft) with fake data. There have been more and more complaints about this in the Bing forums.

A new thread sprung up in the Bing Forums where Brett Yount, program manager for Bing, said:

We are rolling out a new spider, so it is possible that might be causing your activity increase. If this is becoming more of a problem, please send me a mail at [email protected] with your domain name and "single word query complaint" in the subject line and I will investigate.

Clearly, Microsoft now has a name for this issue internally. They are calling this a "complaint" but more importantly, it might be isolated to single word queries. In our example last week, the single word in that case was "donate". In the new thread, it is "copper," plus other undisclosed terms, not specifically mentioned by webmasters.

There is no official explanation from Microsoft on this issue, as of yet.

Forum discussion at Bing Forums.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google

Google Tests AI Generated Search Snippet Summaries

Sep 16, 2025 - 9:20 pm
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: September 16, 2025

Sep 16, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

New (But Old) Google Search Console Achievements

Sep 16, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

What Is Google Question Fringe Score

Sep 16, 2025 - 7:41 am
Bing Ads

Bing Image Search With Ads Mixed Into The Organic Results

Sep 16, 2025 - 7:31 am
Bing Search

Bing Testing Sticky Search Bar Header

Sep 16, 2025 - 7:21 am
 
Previous Story: Google AdSense "Hide These Ads" Feature?