WebProNews

Tag: Bing

  • Bing Ads To Get Landing Pages By Match Type

    Bing announced that it will soon launch unique landing pages by match type for Bing Ads.

    “Want to assign a unique destination URL for each of your bidded keyword match types within the same ad group?” writes Pruitt, on the Bing Ads blog. “What about the ability to pause or resume bidded match types independently even if they are for the same keyword? With Landing Page by Match Type, you’ll be able to do both within Bing Ads Editor and our user interface (UI). You can even assign unique params for each bidded keyword match type.”

    “Under this new functionality content match will only show up if you have a keyword level content match bid or if your ad group is running only on the content network,” she says. “Previously, content match was displayed along with exact, phrase and broad match if you had ad groups running on our search and content network.”

    It can take up to 12 hours for Landing Page by Match Type to actually be enabled for your account, but your ads will continue to serve during that time. The campaigns tab, however, will not be functional.

    To use the feature, you need to be using Bing Ads Editor version 8.3 or higher.

  • Bing Launches Its Own Elections Site

    Bing announced the launch of Bing Elections at Bing.com/elections. It includes “real-time” algorithmic news results from what Bing calls “key national, partisan and non-partisan sources.” It also features an interactive map with national, state and local election results from the Cook Political Report and Real Clear Politics as it’s reported.

    There are filtering options and social data from Twitter and Facebook, as well as a feature to help users find their polling places.

    Bing calls it “another reason to choose Bing over Google.”

    Of course, Google has its own elections site at Google.com/elections, which includes news, relevant Google+ pages, and tons of relevant video content from YouTube, as well as trends, voter info, and various other features.

    “Powered by Bing search technology and combined with the best from MSN and political partnerships including Politico, Real Clear Politics, The Cook Political Report, Huffington Post and Associated Press, bing.com/elections gives those interested in politics a new place to plug into what’s happening in Election 2012,” says Mike Nichols, Corporate Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Bing. “With coverage, polls and predictions of every race and candidate down to the state and congressional level, as well a unique take each day from Politico and its candidate tracker, Bing Elections is constantly updated so you don’t miss a thing.”

    In other Bing news, Microsoft just launched Windows 8, and Bing has been showing off its new apps.

  • Bing Shows Off Its Windows 8 Apps

    Windows 8 is now upon us, and the third-party apps are coming out of the woodwork. Here, we looked at StumbleUpon’s Windows 8-specific experience, for example. Here’s a look at Google’s. Here’s Netflix. And Kindle.

    It’s not a third party, but Microsoft has, of course, launched its new Bing Apps for Windows 8, and the company is giving users a tour today. There is the standard Bing app for web and image search, but there is also a Travel app, a Weather app, a News app, a Finance app and a Sports app.

    “Searching with the Bing app is fast and fluid, whether you use a touch device to tap and swipe or type and click with a keyboard and mouse,” says Brian MacDonald, Corporate Vice President, Online Service Division for Microsoft. “Finger-friendly results and images are front and center letting you quickly find what you’re looking for, so you can search less and do more. You can still rely on the same great Bing web experience in Internet Explorer 10, but we’ve optimized the Bing app to shine on Windows 8.”

    “The Maps app makes it easy to find the places you’re looking for and helps you get there faster,” adds MacDonald. “Quickly pinpoint locations, get directions, see traffic conditions and more— all designed to be easily navigable with touch.”

    The Weather app gives you a preview of the current weather and the hourly, daily, and 10-day forecasts. Here’s what it looks like:

    Windows 8 Bing Weather App

    For the Finance, News, Travel and Sports apps (collectively referred to as the Bing media apps), Bing has partnered with brands like ABC, AP, Bloomberg, CNBC, Fodor’s, Lonely Planet, Reuters and complete daily editions of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Microsoft refers to the experience as a built-in newsstand.

    Bing Media partners

    Finally, the Sports app offers headlines, live scores, schedules, standings, stats, etc., and lets you personalize it based on the teams you care about.

  • The Biggest Thing To Happen To Bing Since Bing?

    Microsoft has made an announcement about Bing that could potentially be very significant in helping the company’s search engine gain market share – the ability to search the web from Xbox via Internet Explorer. Here’s the thing: Xbox 360 sales just surpassed 70 million units. That’s a lot of potential Bing users, even if it doesn’t change their desktop searching habits.

    Bing first came to Xbox last year, but was missing the key web search feature. The new update means people can use Bing from the Xbox just like they can from the desktop, and this is a place where Microsoft has a significant advantage over Google – the TV experience.

    Here’s what Microsoft had to say about it in a blog post:

    Last year, we introduced Bing on Xbox, a new way for you to search movies, TV shows, games, music and apps with the sound of your voice. With more than 65 voice-controlled TV & entertainment apps from leading brands such as HBO, Netflix, and ESPN available on the console, Xbox literally offers millions of entertainment options. By combining all this content with the power of Bing’s deep search expertise, voice recognition technology and the magic of Kinect, we provide instant access to the expansive catalogue of entertainment options on Xbox.

    With this week’s updates, we are releasing a set of improvements to Bing on Xbox that make it even easier for you to discover the entertainment content you want. Not only have the overall voice recognition capabilities and accuracy of Bing on Xbox been improved, but we’ve also added the following features to help refine your searches even further. Search the Web from Your TV: With the addition of “Internet Explorer,” you can now search across the web, as well as the content on your Xbox, to find the most relevant results. Bing on Xbox also searches YouTube for web original video. So, if you’re searching for a film with Jason Statham, you not only get results for his movies from within Xbox, but you can also view related web content within the same search.

    Bing also provides the search for the new Xbox Music service, and Microsoft has added the ability to search movies by genre.

    On top of all of that, they’ve expanded Bing on Xbox to more countries, including: Australia, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Spain, Mexico, France, Canada (FR), Ireland, Japan, Austria and Switzerland (FR and German).

  • Bing Ads Get Keyword Destination URLs

    Microsoft announced today that it has added keyword destination URLs in Bing Ads for all markets. Bing Ads now support a dedicated field to manage them, and it lets advertisers set specific landing pages for each keyword and match type combination.

    The feature, Microsoft says, has been one of the top requested features from its customers. The company’s Ravi Modalavalasa writes on the Bing Ads blog:

    Bing Ads has been supporting {param1} as an interim solution to store keyword specific destination URLs in addition to supporting {param1} as param replacement (similar to param2 and param3) in other parts of ad creative. The use of {param1} for keyword URLs requires {param1} to be referred to in the Ad Destination URL field, which is considered an additional task for users (and was often prone to human errors). The use of the Keyword Destination URL feature, however, does NOT require any reference in ad destination URL, as keyword destination URL by default overrides ad destination URL by default.

    bing destination urls

    The feature is available in Bing Ads and Bing Ads Editor.

    A report released by Kenshoo last week found that Yahoo Bing Network CTRs and CPCs are consistently higher than Google.

  • September U.S. Search Market: Google Up, Microsoft Flat, Yahoo Down

    comScore has released its latest numbers for the U.S. search market. They show Google sites up 0.3% in September at 66.7%, followed by Microsoft sites at 15.9% and Yahoo sites at 12.2%. Ask came in at 3.5%, and AOL came in at 1.8%. Microsoft remained flat from month to month, while Yahoo dropped by .6%.

    “More than 16.3 billion explicit core searches were conducted in September, with Google Sites ranking first with 10.9 billion,” reports comScore. “Microsoft Sites ranked second with 2.6 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2 billion, Ask Network with 565 million (up 3 percent) and AOL, Inc. with 287 million.”

    “In September, 69.4 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google (up 0.6 percentage points), while 25.1 percent of searches were powered by Bing,” the firm notes.

    Here are the usual charts:

    comScore search market in U.S.

    comScore search market

    In August, Bing had gained market share and Google had lost a bit.

  • Bing Ads Get Sitelink Extensions

    Bing Ads Get Sitelink Extensions

    Microsoft announced today that Bing Ads now offer sitelink extensions to advertisers throughout the Yahoo Bing Network. The extensions, according to Microsoft, will drive deeper engagement with potential customers by letting them connect with relevant portions of advertisers’ sites.

    They’ll let advertisers create and update additional messaging and info without modifying text ads or keywords, and will be available on both Yahoo and Bing search pages.

    Bing Ads with sitelinks

    “Over the last few months, we have worked closely with our advertisers across many different industries to build and fine tune our Sitelink Extensions experience,” says Microsoft’s Rishi Bal in a blog post. “A special “Thank you!” goes out to our beta customers for helping shape this offering.”

    “It is worth noting that during our pilot phase of Sitelink Extensions, most of our advertisers experienced an increased click-through rate of 15-25% compared to a standard search ad without Sitelink Extensions — many did much better than that,” Bal adds. “These additional text + URL pairs have the capability to help you drive improved ROI, so I encourage you to try them out today.”

    The ads can be created through the Bing Ads user interface, the latest version of the BIng Ads Desktop Editor and through the Bing Ads API.

  • Bing Just Launched A New iPhone App Called Edibly

    Bing announced today that it is launching a new iPhone app called Edibly in the U.S., though technically, you have to be in Seattle to use it (at least for now).

    It’s a shopping app upon which Microsoft has collaborated with The Pike Place Market Preservation And Development Authority. It’s piloting the offering in Seattle, but perhaps it will be expanded throughout the country and with other markets.

    “Created by the Bing team, Edibly lets you see what’s new at the market via the ‘What’s New Page’, search and browse through products, create a shopping list to prepare for your outing and navigate through the market using the digital map,” says Christian Marc Schmidt, Senior UX Designer on Bing’s Information, Platform and Experiences Team.

    The app will let you preview what is available at the store and view and compare products. You can see where vendors and products you want are on a map, in addition to just looking at what’s new.

    This could be an interesting app if expanded to include other stores and obviously other locations. I guess that will depend on how the pilot goes, and if Microsoft is able to get other partners on board.

  • Bing Talks More About Its New Authors Feature

    As previously reported, Bing has launched a new feature that surfaces authors of news articles articles in its social sidebar. Bing did not talk about how to be included in this in its announcement.

    With Google, you have a specific process to follow to be included in its authorship program, which gets your picture in the search results and helps Google associate you with content you contribute to various sites. There was nothing like this mentioned in Bing’s blog post, so we reached out to find out a little more about how this works.

    A spokesperson for Bing tells WebPronews, “People Who Know are experts and enthusiasts from leading sites and social networks like Twitter, foursquare, Quora, LinkedIn, Google+ and Blogger. Bing identifies ‘People Who Know’ based on what they’ve written or tweeted about. Author pages surface information from our experts/enthusiasts Twitter profiles, and recent and relevant articles they have written.”

    “Some experts and enthusiasts may be influential in a number of areas including Twitter, Quora and foursquare,” the spokesperson adds. “When an expert qualifies in more than one category, in most cases we will surface their results from Twitter and Quora in sidebar. As when we introduce any new feature, we’ll continue to look closely at the right way to surface experts related to the query, and may make adjustments as we learn more about the feature.”

    “We’re just beginning to surface news experts and their author pages in sidebar, so while we won’t have author pages for everyone, we’re hard at work to grow our coverage,” the spokesperson says.

    It’s interesting that Bing is including Google properties like Blogger, and even Google+ (which is connected to Google’s own authorship feature) in its “people who know” mix. It’s also interesting that Facebook wasn’t mentioned in that group, considering the Bing sidebar already makes a great deal of use of Facebook.

    Either way, it will be intriguing to see how the feature (and the sidebar itself, for that matter) evolves.

  • Microsoft Updating Built-In Apps Ahead Of Windows 8 Release

    After years of waiting, Windows 8 will finally launch later this month on October 26. Microsoft is going to party like its 1995, and show the world that Windows 8 is the company’s most substantial release since Windows 95. To help get started, the company is updating all the built-in apps that Windows 8 users will be greeted with when they first turn the machine on.

    Microsoft announced yesterday that they will be slowly rolling out updates through the Windows Store up through the launch of Windows 8. The updates can be downloaded by anybody who has the RTM version of Windows 8 that was released in August. Microsoft says that the Windows Store tile will notify users of any current updates available for all currently installed apps.

    The first updated app out of the gate today is the Bing app. Beyond that, pretty much every included app in Windows 8 will be getting substantial updates as head towards the official launch of the new operating system. Here’s some of the highlights:

    SkyDrive

  • Search within SkyDrive
  • Rename and move folders and files
  • New first-run experience
  • Custom sort order

    • Photos

  • Crop and rotate photos
  • New auto-curated collage slideshows
  • View photos and videos on network locations in your Pictures Library such as Windows Home Server, network shares, and HomeGroups
  • Move through photos in your Pictures Library even when you open them from the desktop

    • Maps

  • Bird’s eye view
  • 3,000+ indoor venue maps
  • Driving directions hints
  • Improved navigation and layout
  • Improved customization, including custom pushpins and roaming options
  • Integration with Bing and Travel apps

    • Bing

  • Richer search results for local content and images
  • Bing rewards integration
  • Use zoom on your search results to see related queries
  • Use the file picker to select an image from Bing to use on your lock screen or in your other apps

    • Music

  • Expanded music services
  • Rich “Now Playing” experience
  • Discover more music with SmartDJ

    • Games

  • Exciting new games
  • In-game purchasing
  • Invites and turn notifications

    • You can check out the rest of the updates over at Microsoft’s original blog post. There’s some good stuff on the way for the Windows 8 faithful. It appears that most of these updates will go into effect before Windows 8 launches for everyone. It looks like the proud tradition of downloading updates on the day of release will be continued with Windows 8.

  • Bing Adds News Authors To Sidebar

    Bing Adds News Authors To Sidebar

    Bing announced today that it has launched a new section for the Bing sidebar to showcase journalists, writers and authors of news stories. Now, when you search for any given topic on Bing, along with the Facebook-powered social results, you’ll see stuff from authors who have discussed the topic.

    I suppose this is Bing’s response to Google’s authorship (which Google is indicating will become a more powerful signal in the future). Instead of integrating the results into the central search experience, however, Bing has elected to showcase authors to the side.

    Authors on Bing

    “Bing’s sidebar helps connect you to these types of people; people who are knowledgeable on the topic you’re searching for including friends you know and experts and enthusiasts you may or may not be familiar with,” says Nathan Penner, Senior Program Manager for the Bing News Team. “Now, when you search for a topic, authors who frequently write articles related to your query will appear alongside other experts and enthusiasts in the sidebar. Hover over the person’s name to learn more about them, see their top articles related to your query, or link to their Twitter page.”

    “While the sidebar provides a summary for some authors, you’ll see a link to “See all articles” which takes you to that author’s articles related to your query right in Bing. We’re just beginning to surface the countless number of authors out there to build this feature, so while we won’t have author pages for everyone, we’re hard at work to grow our coverage so stay tuned.”

    Bing doesn’t mention any markup for authors to implement the way Google does. It does appear to be relying primarily on Twitter for its author info. The bios (at least for the ones I looked at) are drawn from Twitter, and a lot of them include recent tweets. Some also include Klout scores.

    Speaking of which, Bing and Klout just announced a partnership last week. Clearly, Bing is looking to make as much use of it as possible.

  • Bing Maps SDK Now Available For Windows Store Apps

    Let’s say your building a Windows Store app. You want to be on Windows 8 as soon as it launches later this month. Your app features a lot of map interactivity, or it just pulls info from one of the various map programs out there. What are you going to use? The simple answer is Google Maps, but Microsoft thinks you’ll want to use Bing Maps now that they have released an SDK.

    Microsoft announced today that the Bing Maps SDK is now available for Windows Store apps. Those building Windows Store apps will now be able to leverage the power of Bing Maps for their own applications. The possibilities are endless unless you’re wanting to create an app about Area 51. It unfortunately doesn’t show up in Bing Maps.

    It should be noted that Microsoft has released two versions of the Bing Maps SDK. The first is Bing Maps for JavaScript. Those who already have a Web-based Bing Maps app should be able to easily port to the Windows Store. Microsoft says the process should be familiar to those who use their AJAX Web control.

    For those who want to build native apps, Microsoft has also released the Bing Maps SDK for C#, C++ and Visual Basic. The first release will only provide basic functionality to get Bing Maps inside your app. That basic functionality includes pushpins, polylines, polygons, landmarks, venue maps, traffic, and Synth view map style. The SDK has been designed to take advantage of x86, x64 and ARM platforms.

    Those interested in building a Bing Maps app will need a new key called “Windows Store app.” You’ll be able to grab one over at the Bing Maps Account Center. Those who already created a Bing Maps app using a Metro style app trial key will have their key expire on January 15. Those who created a non-trial Metro style app will have their key automatically converted.

    If you’re interesting in creating a Windows Store app, check out these useful links for JavaScript and Native development.

  • Bing: We Aren’t Keeping Track Of The Results From The Bing It On Tool

    Bing is not keeping track of the results from the Bing It On tool, which lets users decide whether they like Google’s or Bing’s results better for any given query. Despite all of the numbers Bing threw around in a blog post on Tuesday, Bing didn’t actually say what percentage of people chose Bing over Google when using the tool. When asked about this, we received the following statement from Bing General Manager Adam Sohn:

    “We aren’t keeping track of the results from the Bing It On tool, because it’s non-scientific and was intended to be a fun way for customers to experiment with both search engines, seeing web search results side-by-side from both Bing and Google, hopefully noticing the progress Bing has made over the past few years.”

    Interesting. I thought the point was to show that “people choose bing web search results over Google nearly 2 to 1 in blind comparison tests.” That’s actually just from the Microsoft-commissioned study Bing pushes on the Bing It On homepage. I guess the actual results of the challenge are irrelevant.

    If they’re not keeping track, and it’s just “a fun way for customers to experiment with both search engines,” why bother to put out stats (like those in this week’s blog post), such as:

  • Since launching the Bing it On Challenge, we have had over five million visits to it, far exceeding our own projections. And the number of visits continues to rise steadily.
  • 33% of Google Primary Users Say They Would Use Bing More After Taking the Challenge
  • 64% of people were surprised by the quality of Bing’s web search results.
  • Over half of the people surveyed (only 4,700 people of the 5 million) indicated their impression of Bing improved after seeing Bing’s web search results next to Google’s.
  • 17% who found Bing more favorable after taking the side-by-side comparison said it revealed flaws in Google’s results

    • The whole thing is really about marketing. In fact, the company was very up front about this in the beginning, as it launched an ad campaign around it, spanning online and television, which debuted during the MTV Video Music Awards. It’s about marketing. Not stats. If it were about stats, Bing would be “keeping track”. It just seems like if you’re going to use stats for your marketing, you might want to keep track of the results of the campaign.

  • Bing It On Challenge Finds Only 33% Of “Primary Google Users” Would “Use Bing More Often”

    Last month, Bing launched the Bing It On Challenge, a campaign and website where people can do a “blind taste test” comparison of Google’s search results compared to Bing. Today, Bing has provided an update of how it’s been going.

    “Our goal with the Bing It On Challenge is to contrast the habitual use of Google with research showing that people chose Bing’s Web search results over Google’s nearly 2:1 in blind comparison tests,” a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews. “Since launching the great search debate, we have had over five million visits to the Bing It On Challenge site. The strong response inspired us to conduct a new round of research designed to test what happens to perceptions about search quality when people take the Challenge.”

    “Our independent research partner, Answers Research, conducted a statistically significant survey across 4,700 people who took the Bing It On Challenge to understand how their Challenge results were impacting their attitudes about search,” he adds. “Of those surveyed, 64 percent of people were surprised by the quality of Bing’s results and over half of the people surveyed indicated their impression of Bing improved after seeing Bing’s search results right next to Google’s. We see people’s perceptions of Bing shifting, with 33 percent of the primary Google users surveyed saying they would use Bing more often after taking the Challenge. All it took was a try!”

    Here is Bing’s blog post about the news.

    So basically, 67% of people who primarily use Google would not use Bing more often after taking the challenge. Also, based on the wording Bing uses, the 33% would use Bing “more often,” which does not necessarily mean they would stop using Google as their primary search engine and start using Bing instead.

    Additionally, Bing says, “17% who found Bing more favorable after taking the side-by-side comparison said it revealed flaws in Google’s results.” Emphasis added.

    It’s still unclear just what percentage of people who took the challenge actually think Bing has better results than Google. When the challenge was launched, Bing said people preferred Bing 2:1. They’re still pushing those numbers. We’ve asked Bing what percentage of users have actually indicated that they prefer Bing results to Google results. We’ll update if we get a response.

    Update: We got a response from Bing GM Adam Sohn, who tells us, “We aren’t keeping track of the results from the Bing It On tool, because it’s non-scientific and was intended to be a fun way for customers to experiment with both search engines, seeing web search results side-by-side from both Bing and Google, hopefully noticing the progress Bing has made over the past few years.”

    Either way, I’m not sure how much the Bing It On challenge really tells us about user preference, considering that the tool strips out key user experience elements from both search engines. Because of this, it hardly portrays an accurate representation of either Google or Bing results.

    Meanwhile, the jury’s still out on the Million Short It On challenge.

  • Bing Invests In Klout, Adds It To Social Sidebar

    Bing announced today that it has entered into a partnership with Klout, including an strategic investment in the company. This, a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews, is aimed at “strengthening social influence data on both the Bing and Klout platforms.”

    “There will be more to come down the road,” he says, but the first things users will notice about the partnership are Klout data surfacing on Bing’s sidebar and highlights from Bing surfacing in the “moments” section of some people’s Klout profiles.

    On the Bing sidebar, you might see a persona’s Klout score and topics they’re influential about. “This will help people connect with the right experts on the things they’re searching for,” the Bing spokesperson says.

    Bing and Klout

    Regarding the Bing “highlights” on Klout, he adds, “These Bing ‘highlights’ may include the number of times a person shows up as an expert in the ‘People Who Know’ section of Bing’s sidebar or the volume/frequency of searches for that person, demonstrating how search can be a powerful new indicator of online influence.”

    Bing and Klout

    “This is just the beginning of a new partnership between the two companies, and another great example of Bing’s commitment to working with industry partners to not only expand its social experience and help people do more with search, but to bring search as a signal into other social experiences,” he says.

    It’s unclear how much Microsoft has invested in Klout. Update: Microsoft gave us the following statement from Bing Corporate Vice President, Derrick Connell: “We aren’t disclosing specific terms of the investment.”

    Michael Arrington of CrunchFund, an investor in Klout, says, “The reason Klout was able to get a deal like this done is because they have a lot (a whole lot) of data on people. This data, along with the fact that they remain a neutral party working with all the giants, allows them to create a sort of Page Rank that tells others how influental you are in given areas.”

    According to Eric Eldon at TechCrunch, the deal is not exclusive, indicating that Klout could, theoretically, become a ranking factor in Google.

    Since rolling out the social sidebar back in May, Bing has added several new features, including Quora and Foursquare data.

  • If You Miss Google Maps On iOS, Bing Thinks You Should Use Bing Maps

    Google Maps and its disappearance from iOS have been in the news a lot over the past week or so, and lots of other companies are stepping up pointing to their own maps offerings. Microsoft is the latest, and is now going around reminding people that they can use Bing Maps from the Bing app on iOS 6.

    “With all the recent chatter about mobile apps, particularly mapping in iOS 6, a lot of people are wondering which apps given them both the essential tools they need and a great experience,” a spokesperson for Bing tells WebProNews. “Well, Bing has them covered and now is a great time to download the Bing App for iPhone.”

    “The Bing App, which is free and iOS 6 compatible, helps people easily find what they need – whether it’s using voice activated search to find maps and driving directions or Bing Vision to scan and find that great bottle of wine that was shared with friends,” he adds. “Just wanted to offer a reminder that a great mapping and search option exists for iPhone users, and they don’t have to wait for it.”

    The company also put out a blog post to the same effect, though they didn’t talk about maps too much in it, other than to mention that you can “get walking, transit, and driving directions with current traffic conditions and maps,” and to show a picture of Bing Maps on an iPhone.

    Bing Maps on iPhone

    It’s worth noting that iOS users can still access Google Maps from the web via their mobile devices. There’s just not an app currently available (though it sounds like that will change within the next couple months or so).

    In other Google Maps news, the company introduced some pretty breathtaking under water “Street View” imagery today.

  • Bing Beats Google, If You’re Looking to Kill Yourself [UPDATED]

    UPDATE: I’ve received the following statement from Bing:

    “In some cases we do prioritize the hotline and we’re reviewing the guidelines for instant answers related to this type of query,” says Stefan Weitz, Senior Director, Bing.

    ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Earlier this month, Bing launched their “Bing It On” challenge – a blind comparison test designed to see if users preferred the search results from Bing as opposed to those of Google, if they weren’t biased. Bing said that in these blind tests, internet users chose Bing over Google by a 2 to 1 margin. The campaign has some detractors, as some pointed out that Bing was excluding features like Google’s knowledge graph from the challenge results. It could be argued that Knowledge graph is one of the things that people really love about Google nowadays, so that wasn’t exactly fair. And Google’s Matt Cutts pointed out a pretty big fail within Bing’s search results.

    Oh well, all of that is beside the point, except to frame the background for this: Bing totally bests Google’s search results, if your search queries involve suicide.

    Check out this comparison of Google and Bing results for the search “how to commit suicide,” courtesy of redditor naidlm:

    As you can see, Google inserts the contact information for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at the top, before any search results. Also, Google’s autocomplete will not suggest the full phrase as any point in typing the query. Bing, on the other hand, autocompletes it for you and lists a bunch of related searches on the right.

    Additionally, “how to commit suicide” searches on both Yahoo and Ask.com display the number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline above all results. Neither Yahoo or Ask.com will suggest the complete phrase at any point.

    Then, there is the response to other phrases like “how to kill…” Bing autocompletes it with “yourself” and “yourself painlessly” while Google simply suggests bugs.

    To be fair, neither Google or Bing can imagine all possible suicide-related queries and plan for them. Searches for “how to slit my wrists” appear similar on both sites. And both sites freely autocomplete phrases about committing various acts of homicide. No “get help before you kill mama” warning from Google.

    But searches for the phrases “I want to kill myself,” “I want to die,” “how to die,” “suicide” and “how to commit suicide” bring up the number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline as a feature in Google search. No such luck with Bing.

    We’re not suggesting that Bing should nerf their autocomplete results. Plenty of people take issue with just how many words appear on that Google autocomplete blacklist. But it wouldn’t be too hard to throw a phone number for a hotline at the top of the results when someone searches one of these loaded phrases. Google did it out of a partnership with Samaritans back in 2010. Maybe they have yet to push Bing to include the feature?

    But it’s hard to argue that Bing wins this round of the search battle by giving the user exactly what they want – even if what they want is information on how to end their own life.

  • Million Short Launches Its Version Of “Bing It On” Challenge (Million Short It On)

    Did you have fun with the Bing’s Bing It On Challenge? Well, welcome to the arena MillionShort It On, a similar offering from alternative search engine Million Short.

    We reported on Million Short a while back. It’s an experimental search engine that lets you remove the top million sites from your Google results. It may not always be the most useful way to find the info your’e specifically looking for, but if you’re not looking for anything specific, and want to find some really deep content about a subject that you otherwise may never find in a million years, it could be just what the doctor ordered.

    Founder Sanjay Arora tells WebProNews, “Inspired by BingItOn, we’ve set up a head to head search results challenge against Google. Niche, long-tail searches are resulting in a strong preference of MillionShort results over Google results, and I invite you to try the challenge as well.”

    And of course, like with Bing’s version, there’s a video (though this one seems to have more of a sense of humor than Bing’s):

  • Bing Ads Launches Keyword Suggestions

    Bing Ads Launches Keyword Suggestions

    Bing announced the launch of a new keyword suggestions feature for Bing Ads (formerly adCenter). Advertisers can now apply suggested keywords customized, based on the ads and keywords they’re already using.

    “On the Bing Ads Opportunities page, we now provide you with exact match keyword suggestions that we think are relevant to your campaigns and will help your ads serve more often,” says Microsoft’s Manu Aery. “The suggestions are based on the keywords and ads you’re already using in each ad group.”

    Bing provides an estimate of how many monthly searches you could reach by using the recommended keyword, a suggested first page bid, a recommended ad group and campaign, an “easy” accept option to apply the suggested keyword, and an option to add unique destination URLs and parameters.

    To access the feature, go to the Opportunities tab, and then the Keyword Suggestions tab.

    Microsoft notes that API users will call the GetKeywordOpportunities API to get the list of keyword suggestions that are relevant to the specified ad group.

  • Bing Maps Can Pinpoint Your House In High Resolution, But Still Can’t Show You Area 51

    Bing Maps are by far the best thing to come out of Microsoft’s insistence to take on Google in search. The maps and aerial imagery is on par with a lot of the work that Google does in the field. Microsoft just finished up their latest Bing Maps project and the results are pretty awesome.

    Microsoft recently wrapped up the Global Ortho program here in the U.S. The project sees Microsoft capturing aerial imagery of every nook and cranny in the continental United States. To prove their point, Microsoft provided a map that shows how much land they were able to cover:

    Bing Maps Area 51

    As you can see, they were able to get the entire U.S. except for two small areas in the Southwest. Microsoft says that they got clearance to photograph everywhere in the U.S. except for Area 51 and the Vandenberg Air Force Base. The larger of the two yellow areas is Area 51. I didn’t realize the U.S. government needed that much land to hide the existence of alien spacecraft.

    All joking aside, Microsoft got some great aerial imagery. They were able to capture the entire U.S. at a 30cm resolution. They concede that other people have captured aerial imagery at higher resolutions, but nobody has captured the entire landmass of the continental U.S. at 30cm resolution until now.

    Let’s do a little comparison test for now. Here’s Google’s aerial imagery for the University of Kentucky with a close up on William T. Young Library.

    Bing Maps Area 51

    And here’s Bing’s GO shot of the same building and surrounding area.

    Bing Maps Area 51

    In all honesty, it’s hard to tell which is better at this distance. The Bing maps provide a much better view of really close up shots, but Google trumps that advantage with their impressive Street View.

    Comparisons aside, the Bing Maps team has been able to get some great imagery of our country. It’s even more surprising that they were able to get such great shots of lesser known areas. It’s still unfortunate, however, that the Bing Maps team were not able to get shots of Area 51.

  • Bing Launches Bing News App For Facebook

    Bing announced the launch of a new Facebook app called My Bing News. The app lets you browse top stories and subscribe to categories you’re interested in.

    You can select from selected topics (Entertainment, Business, Health, Politics, Sports, etc.) or create your own. The app will pull what it deems the most important stories based on your interests from sources across the web to your personal page on Facebook.

    This could be a new way for Bing to capture some users who are already using Facebook, even if they don’t always go to Bing for their everyday search needs.

    “Integration with Facebook makes it easy to check the news while you’re checking in on your friends, and easy to share what you find with others,” says Nathan Penner, Senior Program Manager on the Bing News team. “You’re in control over what and how you share. You can share and comment on an individual article, or, if you choose, enable sharing as you subscribe to topics and read stories. It’s up to you.”

    Your friends can easily read what you share without having to install the app.

    My Bing News is currently in Beta.