You Need Webmaster Tools for Live Search

If you've done any search engine optimization for your web site then you may already be familiar with Google's Webmaster Central. This is where you can help Google make sure your site is found and indexed by the search engine properly.

Microsoft Live Search now has similar tools available for the Live Search engine at Live Search Webmaster Center . The process is very simple. Log in with your Live user id. Next create an entry for your site (or sites). You'll need some way to let the search engine know that you actually manage the site (so others can't easily get access to your stats and ratings). The easiest way to do this is place an XML file named LiveSearchAiteAuth.XML on the root directly of your site with the XML supplied. Next click on the name of your site under Click to expand and you'll see the stats and information Live Search has about your site -- Or if there are any errors finding and authenticating to your site (like not being able to find the auth xml file you needed to place there.)

Now you can enter keywords to see what matches, look at the top links to and from your site, and check things like your robots.txt file. Also remember to add a sitemap to help the search engine pay attention to the directories you want searched (and not searched.)

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