Add Bing to your keywords.ini file
Bing is [almost] here.
WebTrends is making it a lot easier to update your keywords.ini and browsers.ini fields. Go to http://www.webtrends.com/support/browser-and-keywords-updater.aspx for the latest, which for keywords.ini is version 6. (You’ll get a new keywords.ini and browsers.ini together.)
The referrer is “bing.com” and the query term is in the parameter “q.” There’s another parameter, “form=” that you might want to consider reporting on also. One value of form= is QBLH, an interesting choice. Look it up.
If you’ve already customized your keywords.ini and you don’t want it to be overwritten, then you don’t want to use the updated file from WebTrends. So, here are instructions for modification of keywords.ini.
Step 1 – Find the file
There are usually two or three copies of keywords.ini in the typical WebTrends installation. Typical locations are:
/WebTrends/modules/analysis/engine/8.0d (8.1, 8.5, etc)
/WebTrends/storage/config/component/lookupdata/
/WebTrends/storage/config/engine/8.0d (8.1, 8.5, etc)
Open the first instance of keywords.ini with a proper text editor. By “proper” we mean something like TextPad rather than Notepad, because Notepad doesn’t play well with the system when the file is in use. With TextPad, you can [usually] take the risk of changing the file while WebTrends is running.
(Make a backup!)
Step 2 – Change the Engine list. Go to the end of the long Engine list. Find the last numbered entry. It’ll look something like this:
Engine367=Looksmart (if your last numbered entry is 367)
Add a line using the next number, like this:
Engine368=Bing
Step 2 – Add the specifications. Go to the end of the specification list (groups of three or four lines). The last one might look like this (if your last one is Looksmart)
[LookSmart]
ID1=looksmart.com
KeywordIndicator1=key=
Add a blank line and then this:
[Bing]
ID1=bing.com
KeywordIndicator1=q=
Step 3. Save and close the file.
Step 4. Make the same changes to other copies of keywords.ini in your installation.
That’s all it takes.
Postscript
We’ve done the manual change a little differently than WebTrends does. We’ve chosen to use “bing.com” as the identifier, while WebTrends just uses “bing.” It’ because we expect to see a bingaroo and a bingbang and who knows what else before long.
We’d like to note, being perfectionists as we are, that the Bing site has no information about itself that’s written for webmasters, analysts, etc. Its “about” information is entirely a sell to potential searchers.
And, we noticed that The WebTrends Outsider is not properly indexed in Bing. No big deal. The same thing happened with Cuil, and look what happened to THAT.
2 comments
I like referring to Bing as “Microsoft Bing” in my reports. This is sort of self-documenting so that when we look back from some future date, we will understand and remember the changeover.
Thanks as always for relevant entries!
well that was relatively painless
I’ve been meaning to do this for ages and putting it off because i thought it would be unpleasant. Took me about 5 mins
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