YH-05: Confirm Bing Webmaster Tools verification and submit the sitemap

  • Source document: .agents/yahoo-seo-visibility-plan.md (Phase 4 item 1)
  • Owner: 👤 User only
  • Priority: Medium
  • Status: Partly done. The msvalidate.01 verification meta tag is live in _includes/head.html (line ~101), from commits “Bing validation” and “Fix bing issues”. Sitemap submission can’t be verified by the agent.
  • Depends on: None

[!IMPORTANT] User-only task: Reece needs to do this. It needs the Bing Webmaster Tools account.

Task

Make sure jackhighbowls.com (not just the old krussll.github.io/jhb) is verified in Bing Webmaster Tools, and that the sitemap has been submitted and processed. Bing’s index powers Yahoo’s organic results.

Context

  • Sitemap URL: https://jackhighbowls.com/sitemap.xml (custom template at the repo root; the jekyll-sitemap plugin is disabled in _config.yml).
  • IndexNow is already wired up: tools/submit_indexnow.py with key 35a0d3118063498b9485b529131cacd8, and .github/workflows/indexnow.yml runs on pushes to main/gh-pages. Check the IndexNow report in Bing Webmaster Tools to confirm submissions are accepted (no 403/422 errors).
  • If the old krussll.github.io/jhb property still exists, consider setting up a site move or removing it.

Completion criteria

  • jackhighbowls.com shows as verified in Bing Webmaster Tools.
  • https://jackhighbowls.com/sitemap.xml is submitted with status “Success” and the discovered URL count is roughly the number of posts and pages.
  • The IndexNow section in Bing Webmaster Tools shows recent successful submissions.