TOPIC: How to Verify Your Site With Bing

Hi Guys,

There are two ways that you can add the Bing verification to your site. The easier option depends on when you created your site with us. If you signed up for web site hosting with Home Inspector Pro after April of last year (April 2010), under your Admin Menu, you should have an option for Search Engine Verification. If you have this option, the following instructions will work for your site:

1. Go to www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster/ . You must have a Windows Live ID to use this service. Click on the option to Sign In, or sign up for a free account.
2. After you have logged in, on the Webmaster Tools Home page, under the Sites section of the page, click 'Add Site'. You will be prompted to enter the full URL of your web site (ie seattle-home-inspections.com/ ). Enter the address and click Submit.
3. You will then be prompted to Verify Ownership. In most cases, Option 1 (Place an XML file on your web server) will work the easiest. Download the file XML file (BingSiteAuth.xml) and save it to a location on your computer (for example, on your Desktop). Leave the Verification Ownership window open (we will come back to this in a few minutes).
4. Next, in a new window or tab, go to your web site and login using your user name and password.
5. Click on Search Engine Verification under the Admin Menu.
6. Click the Add Verification at the top of the page.
7. Select Bing as the Search Engine and click Next.
8. On the following page, click Choose File under 'Upload an existing verification file'.
9. Browse to the location that you saved the file from Bing (the BingSiteAuth.xml on your Desktop), select the file, and click Open.
10. Leave the remaining fields blank and click Save.

Note: If you decidede to use Option 2 (Copy and paste a tag in your default webpage), you can copy and paste the entire meta tag as shown in the Verifcation Ownership window (for example <meta name="msvalidate.01" content="F07D19468548E1CB6062B9C5C5874BBE" />) instead of choosing the file. Either option will work properly.

11. Return to the Bing Webmaster tools window and click on Verify.

If the verification is successful, you can will then be taken to a page with statistics for your web site. It will start off with no data, as it only collects data from the point the file was added to your site. You can return to this page at a future date and see the statistics collected so far.

If you do not have Search Engine Verification as an option under the Admin Menu on your web site, contact Home Inspector Pro support and we can work with you to manually place the XML file on your site for you.

Do we really have to do the search engine verification? I see on the newer sites there is a page to do that, but is it necessary?

No. It's only if you want to log into Google & Bing webmaster tools to look over the stats they have for you.

Done! Worked great Dom, Thanks!