In a move to support publishers and improve user experience, Bing has decided to implement alternative approaches to the traditional method for blocking AI tools from using content. Though Bing is actively collaborating with the AI community to develop future standards, the search engine has taken matters into its own hands by introducing meta-tag approaches.
Fabrice Canel, an official from Microsoft Bing, expressed the company’s commitment to providing more immediate support for publishers while working towards establishing AI standards, Search Engine Round Table reported.
“While we are actively collaborating with the industry on establishing future AI standards, we also wanted to provide more immediate support for publishers.” We are pleased to share that we have built on existing standard webmaster controls to empower publishers to control the use of their content in Bing Chat and for training Microsoft’s generative AI models. Webmasters have the choice of implementing these controls as follows,” said Fabrice, as per SERound Table.
Bing is offering site owners multiple choices with these controls. The first option involves no action, allowing their content to be included in Bing Chat answers. This enables the AI system to generate more helpful responses and improve site ranking opportunities within Bing Chat. Furthermore, site content may be used in training Microsoft’s generative AI foundation models, enhancing predictive capabilities.
Webmasters also have the alternative to add the NOCACHE tag to their content. By doing so, Bing will only display the URL, snippet, and title in the Bing Chat answer, ensuring the content itself remains confidential.
Additionally, content labeled with the NOARCHIVE tag will not be included in Bing Chat answers nor be linked to in any way. Bing pledges that content tagged with NOCACHE or NOARCHIVE will still appear in search results, maintaining visibility for publishers.
Bing recognizes the need for strict content control, especially for sites with paywalls. To facilitate the discovery of paywall articles, Bing suggests combining the NOCACHE and NOARCHIVE tags, as many paywall sites primarily utilize the NOARCHIVE tag.