Shortly after that day in March when we had to take the “link:” operator offline, a small team was formed in Redmond. Its singular focus: to build the next-generation set of tools, content and resources for SEO professionals and webmasters (and get “link:” back in your hands). Creatively named Webmaster Portal (we’re really good at marketing), it will be a single, friendly place to find all tools and information relating to Live Search SEO. Initially we’ll support these scenarios:

• Troubleshooting tools to ensure MSNBot is effectively crawling and indexing your site
• Sitemap creation, submission and ping tools
• Statistics about your website
• Consolidation of content submission resources
• New content and community resources

While we expect the tools to be available publicly in late Fall, we still have some polishing to do.  In the meantime we’ve created a private beta program to let adventuresome folks get their hands on the tools sooner – and help polish things by providing feedback. If you’re interested in participating in the beta program over the next few months, please send a mail to lswmp@microsoft.com to apply!

-- Nathan Buggia, Sr. Product Manager - Webmaster & Developer
-- Ryan Burkhardt, Group Program Manager - Webmaster & Developer
 

For those of you attending the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, CA this week, drop by and check us out at one of these sessions:

• Search Engine Q&A On Links – Day 3 at 4:45pm (8/22)
  Join Eytan Seidman, Lead Program Manager for the Live Search crawler, to answer your questions about links.
• Meet the Crawlers – Day 4 at 10:45am (8/23)
  More fun with Eytan, here to answer your questions about how to submit and provide content to Live Search. (have you seen our new product upload service?)

Also, be sure to check out our after hours event:

• Live Search Mixer for SEO Professionals – Day 3 (8/22) at 7:00pm
  Stop by to mingle with the team behind sitemaps and a few forthcoming offerings for webmasters – and don’t forget your business cards. Attendance is very limited, email: nbuggia {at} microsoft {.} com to RSVP.

We look forward to seeing you there!
-- Nathan Buggia, Live Search Product Manager