Microsoft is pretty serious about Bing and competing with Google. They are now the second most used search engine so they better step up their game to keep growing their audience. Of course, with more users comes more people who don’t know how to use Bing specific tools. Microsoft has put together a short list that you may want to check out.

Posting on the Bing Webmaster blog, the team has put together four tips for Webmasters to get the most out of the tools Bing provides. They also took the opportunity to make an April Fools Joke, but I’ll get to that later.

The Bing team wants to bring your attention to their keyword research tool. It allows a user to, what else, search for keywords, but the method it uses is a bit unique. They claim that instead of pulling its results from paid advertising, the keyword research tool pulls results from organic search queries. You can search for just a phrase or an exact word and it will pull up results from up to six months ago. You can also target specific regions or languages in your quest to find better keywords.

Everything is getting an API these days and Bing is no different. The Bing Webmaster API is available under settings on the left side of the Bing Webmaster page. Like other APIs, the Bing Webmaster API allows you to plug it in to a dashboard for constant data streams. It’s especially useful if you’re having to watch multiple search Web sites for upcoming trends and keywords.

There is now an option to have emails sent to you whenever Bing detects something like malware. It’s an alert system that would keep you notified throughout the day in case anything came up. To ensure that you’re not getting spammed, you can control the amount of emails they send you. This option can be found under settings in the preferences section.

Under the traffic section for your domain, they have added a new column called the “Avg. Impression Position.” This is a constantly fluctuating number that tells you how Bing views your Web site against specific queries. When the number increases, it means that your Web site is being pushed high up the search results. The vice versa is true when the number goes lower. Keywords are one of the most important drivers to Web sites so having a high Impression Position is key to driving traffic to your site via keywords.

Finally, I mentioned that they made an April Fools joke. It’s not a very good one, but at least they tried. Bingbot, the software that runs all the previously mentioned programs, is said to be writing a memoir. Microsoft says he starred in Real Steel, was a stunt double for KITT from Knight Rider and almost got the role of C3PO. To make this joke better, they should make a Bing branded Knight Rider for their next ad. Just an idea, Microsoft. You can pay me when the ad campaign is a success.