Billions of images are discovered by Bing searchers every month. Through Bing.com and our search partnerships with companies like Apple, Amazon and Yahoo, customers are performing more image searches to satisfy a growing range of needs. We understand that our users have a huge interest in learning more about images and connecting with the source site to complete tasks.

We want to build a deeper relationship with webmasters to drive engaged customers to be inspired to learn and do more.

Why Bing Image Search?

Images are pervasive in search; over 1 billion image searches are performed every month by over 100M users on Bing.com and its search partners. Relevant images are presented in many web searches and many billions of image results are presented across all devices and search partners every month. As a webmaster, increasing your exposure on Bing Image Search will drive more high quality traffic to your site.

Driving Engaged Traffic

Image search engagement has grown significantly over the past few years. Users have discovered that image search is a powerful way to find more and do more. We’ve observed our customers wanting to complete tasks through image search such as purchasing a print of an image or the product in it, finding related items and learning more about it. We’ve evolved our image search experience to help our customers efficiently locate the best place to accomplish their search tasks. Rich metadata from the source site is prominently showcased to help our users and drive traffic to the content providers. To learn more about our new experience please read more on the main Search Blog, and watch the announcement video below.

What should I do as a webmaster?

The first step to being a part of this experience is to get your structured data to Bing Image Search. This can help increase your site’s visibility, Bing’s understanding of your content, and potentially drive more high quality traffic to your site.

An effective way to accomplish this is to ensure your pages are marked up with well-known schemas. The open schemas we recommend include Schema.org and OpenGraph. Microdata, Microformats, and RDFa are also supported. When Bing crawlers fetch your page content, these schemas are utilized to understand your content along with the associated metadata to enrich our knowledge surrounding an image. The more metadata provided with an image, the more likely we will surface your content. Other than the typical popularity and descriptive elements, adding even more context such as if the image is related to a recipe or a product are especially useful. For a few examples of structured markup, please see below.

Schema.org Product example (link)

<body data-page-type=”wcm” data-modules=”nord/page/product” itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Product” >

…

<div id=”product-image” >

<img src=”http://g.nordstromimage.com/imagegallery/store/product/Large/9/_9606569.jpg” itemprop=”image” data-zoom-image=”http://g.nordstromimage.com/imagegallery/store/product/Zoom/9/_9606569.jpg” data-gigantic-image=”http://g.nordstromimage.com/imagegallery/store/product/Gigantic/9/_9606569.jpg” alt=”” />

…

</div>

…

<section id=”product-title” >

<h1 itemprop=”name”>Trim Fit Washed Plaid Sport Shirt</h1>

</section>

You can also use meta tags with content attribute and no visible text rendered to user.

<!– Modified code sample to reflect schema.org –>

<title itemprop=”name”>Nordstrom Trim Fit Washed Plaid Sport Shirt | Nordstrom</title>

<meta name=”description” content=”Free shipping and returns on Nordstrom Trim Fit Washed Plaid Sport Shirt at Nordstrom.com. A softly washed plaid cotton sport shirt in a trim, modern fit is classically styled with a button-down collar and chest pocket.” itemprop=”description” />

OpenGraph Product example (link)

<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://g.nordstromimage.com/imagegallery/store/product/Large/9/_9606569.jpg” />

<link rel=”image_src” href=”http://g.nordstromimage.com/imagegallery/store/product/Large/9/_9606569.jpg” />

<title>Nordstrom Trim Fit Washed Plaid Sport Shirt | Nordstrom</title>

<meta name=”description” content=”Free shipping and returns on Nordstrom Trim Fit Washed Plaid Sport Shirt at Nordstrom.com. A softly washed plaid cotton sport shirt in a trim, modern fit is classically styled with a button-down collar and chest pocket.” />

<meta property=”fb:app_id” content=”143447719050737″ />

<meta property=”og:type” content=”website” />

<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”Nordstrom” />

<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://shop.nordstrom.com/s/nordstrom-trim-fit-washed-plaid-sport-shirt/3968654″ />

<meta property=”og:title” content=”Nordstrom Trim Fit Washed Plaid Sport Shirt | Nordstrom” />

<meta property=”og:description” content=”Free shipping and returns on Nordstrom Trim Fit Washed Plaid Sport Shirt at Nordstrom.com. A softly washed plaid cotton sport shirt in a trim, modern fit is classically styled with a button-down collar and chest pocket.” />

To verify if your markup can be parsed by Bing’s crawlers, please check the Bing Markup Validator (requires login). For more examples across different segments that Bing supports, please visit the Bing Webmaster Help & How-To site.

We also support the mediaRSS and PubSubHubbub feed formats. Direct feeds are preferred to allow us to have the most up-to-date and most comprehensive knowledge about your site. Bing Image Search can then surface your content in a relevant and effective manner. Please contact us directly using the email listed below to discuss logistics around sharing a feed.

In the future, please do not hesitate to contact us with your questions and feedback. We are eager to engage with interested site owners, showcase your data in new and exciting search experiences, and help connect you with many more engaged customers!

— The Bing Image Search team