Microsoft Bing to rely more on lastmod date in XML sitemap files for crawling
Microsoft Bing will soon rely a lot more on the date you specify in the lastmod field within your XML sitemap for crawling. Fabrice Canel, Principal Product Manager at Microsoft Bing said that starting in June 2023, Bing will revamp its “crawl scheduling stack to better utilize the information provided by the “lastmod” tag in sitemaps.”
What is lastmod. The lastmod field is the date of last modification of the page as specified in your XML sitemap file. It is not necessarily the date the URL was created but the date the last time that page was modified.
Bing says lastmod is critical. Microsoft Bing said the lastmod date is “one of the most critical tags that you can include in your sitemap.” It helps Bing crawl more efficiently today and will help Bing crawl a lot more in the future, the company said. “This will enhance our crawl efficiency by reducing unnecessary crawling of unchanged content and prioritizing recently updated content,” Fabrice Canel wrote.