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I'm in Bing Webmaster Tools, under Index > URL Normalization. Many parameters are listed in the table with 3 other columns: Status, Source, Date. The "Source" column says "Webmaster" where I have added parameters, and "Bing" where I assume the parameter has been auto-detected. "Date" is probably the last date it detected the parameter.

bing parameters

I've tried searching the help files but I can't find what the Status column means. The top of the page says:

This feature allows you to specify query parameters for Bing’s crawler to ignore.

But it's not clear whether "Enable" or "Disable" is related to this, and if so what happens in each case. Does anyone know?

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Sometimes parameter values completely change the content of the page; sometimes they only reflect a re-ordering; sometimes they do not change the content at all but reflect a referral or tracking campaign or some other information. By default Bing understands each unique URL as a unique page, which can lead to "duplicate content" being indexed and potentially penalized or at least different backlinks with split link juice even though they may point to the same page and content.

So by default the parameters are "Disabled," which means Bing will treat any URLs with unique values for those parameters as unique URLs. i.e. if Parameter "rows" was disabled:

http://www.example.com/?rows=10
http://www.example.com/?rows=20

If you change the status to "Enabled," Bing will ignore that parameter on any URL in your site, implying that it represents a slight change or no change at all in the content of the page and allowing you to not split your link juice among them.

http://www.example.com

See this SEOmoz post, scroll down to IV (9).

In the same section of BWC ("Index"), there's an option called "URL Normalization". The name implies Bing treats this more like canonicalization, but there's only one option – "ignore". Like Google, you get a list of auto-detected parameters and can add or modify them.

[snip]

As with the GWT tools, I'd consider the Bing versions to be a last resort. Generally, I’d only use these tools if other methods have failed, and one search engine is just giving you grief.

The wording by Bing is a little confusing, but I think the idea is that you "enable" or "disable" the ability to ignore the parameter.

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  • This is help full but if the show a video for normalization issue then it will more helpful
    – user13704
    Mar 1, 2012 at 10:49

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