WebProNews

Tag: Bing

  • What Does The Future Of Search Look Like?

    Tim Mayer, the former head of search product and business at Yahoo, spoke in the keynote session “Future of Search: Mobile, Social, and Vertical.”

    Coverage of PubCon will continue at WebProNews Videos. Stay with WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.

    Tim-Mayer Mayer said Bing is gaining ground and Google is responding with things like Google Instant.  There have been new and larger changes in search over the last 12 months.

    The PC market is beginning to mature with just single digit growth. Mobile search is booming with double digit growth. New ranking features are becoming more important over time. Local is reaching a tipping point where it is starting to get huge.

    “I see the 10 blue links becoming less important over time,” Mayer said.

    The future of search is moving in two directions:

    Traditional search will evolve quickly

    New area of growth is search suggestion and tips

    He sees five key trends that are transforming search.

    *Mobile queries will be 20 percent of the search market by 2012.

    *Growth will be in apps, not browser.

    *Input difficult, there needs to be more ways to input information

    *More context (use it for better targeting)

    *“Verticalizing” SERPS

    People are starting to go directly to a vertical search engine instead of using Google or Bing. Search engines have to adapt to compete in the vertical space.

    With these changes there are opportunities:

    “App discovery is the key to customer satisfaction in the smartphone era,” said Mayer. Match intent/queries with apps, along with a single search box.

    Mobile advertising is a huge opportunity and costs are still low.

    Commerce: Price comparison- offline to online

    Optimize vertical entity page for search

    WebProNews Anchor Abby Johnson contributed to this article.

  • Google Aims to Prevent Losing Mobile Users to Bing on Windows Phone 7

    Google has launched a Google Search app for Windows Phone 7. The first Windows Phone 7 devices in the U.S. became available today.

    While, we will no doubt see a flood of apps for the platform rush in, it is smart for Google to get theirs out there immediately, as Windows Phone 7 devices come with Bing as the default search option (via a hard key).

    Windows Phone 7 presents Microsoft with a tremendous opportunity to gain some market share for its search engine, depending on how well they sell. Many users will probably not actively seek out Google over Bing. They’ll just use the default. 

    (more…)

  • Bing Activates Facebook Features, Makes Some Changes

    Bing announced today that it is completing its deployment of the new Facebook features announced last month. They should be available to all U.S. users. 

    Bing has made some adjustments to the features as originally announced due to user feedback. "Early users told us that they expected the same access to their friends inside Bing as they already have inside Facebook. This surfaced as some dissatisfaction with the way the features were working, specifically people were disappointed when they did not see their friends show up in their searches," says Bing Group Program Manager Paul Yiu. "So we looked for a way to respect the sharing intent you have with your friends inside Facebook, and use that to deliver a similarly powerful experience inside Bing."

    "Assuming you have selected to share information with your friends inside Facebook, you will show up in profile searches in Bing, even if you have selected not to have profile information show up in public search engines," says Yiu. "This is similar behavior to the way Facebook works. It’s important to note that you will not show up in web searches on major search engines including Bing, just in Facebook Profile Searches within Bing conducted by your friends or friends of friends."

    Get Microsoft Silverlight

    Additionally, Bing has made it so those with Facebook friends under 18 (but above 13 – the age Facebook requires for a profile) can surface those friends in Bing’s results. Any Facebook user who has the features active can show up in searches for their friends or friends of friends.

    Upon the original announcement of the new features, WebProNews Publisher and iEntry CEO Rich Ord asked if social signals are the new PageRank. What do you think? Share your thoughts here. 

  • Are Social Signals the New PageRank?

    Microsoft  partners with Facebook to bring social relevance to its Bing search engine. This is a huge announcement  with deep implications for the future of search and whether Bing can make gains on Google. Microsoft is leveraging it’s ownership stake in Facebook to strike an exclusive relationship that can’t be matched by Google. In essence, Bing is betting that social signals are better than link signals in determining search relevance. 

    Are social signals more relevant than links? Let us know in the comments.

    Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg himself made this announcement of a social search partnership with Bing. Zuckerberg stated, "What makes this a great partnership is that in this case Microsoft is the underdog in search. In fact, I couldn’t think of anyone better to be working with to build the next generation of search!"

    One of the first products of the Bing / Facebook partnership is that via a Bing iFrame, Bing search results are native inside of Facebook searches. Now, Facebook data will be integrated into Bing and influence search results based on signals from the searchers social connections. This product, called Bing Social brings Facebook posts and links that relate to the topic searched right into search results.

    How does Bing bring the social context of Facebook into search relevance? Starting today, Bing is integrating data from your friends and social network into search results. This could include information on "likes", reviews, photos and links from your friends into your search experience. According to Bing, search results will be really personal to the user, different than what others will see for the same search. This "instant personalization" will make a search by you relevant to you alone and not necessarily that relevant to someone else.

    Obviously, the impact on SEO will be enormous. Search optimization currently relies extensively on relevant links from authority sites. If links and ‘likes’ from your personal social network become more important than links from websites then SEM’s will need to rethink their SEO strategy. 

    With the Facebook module your search results will now include information on what your friends liked or commented regarding the restaurant or movie or other item you searched for. Your Bing search results will actually be different depending on what your network of friends link to, like or dislike.

    Another big implication is with a non-celebrity people search. Search engines don’t do this well today, often giving non-relevant results for common names. What Bing is going to do is use signals provided by Facebook such as location, friends, jobs and their interests to better determine what person you may actually be searching for. Bing is opening up features that will let you additionally add and confirm data back to Facebook as well. Bing also has plans to bring in the faces from Facebook of those who liked and disliked links that show up in your search results. 

    Social search may reignite the search wars. After all, Google rose up to conquer other search power houses like Alta Vista because PageRank made search results more relevant. If social search makes search results even better, then history has shown that the most relevant search algorithm will ultimately win consumers over!

  • Facebook And Bing Talk Social Search

    Facebook And Bing Talk Social Search

    Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President, Online Business, Microsoft  says they are  grateful for the Facebook partnership. We are going to show how search gets better because of your friends.

    Editor’s note. This article was live blogged.

    Qi Liu, President, Online Services Division Microsoft, talks about partnership between Facebook and Bing and taking search to the next level. We will harness potential of social, take it to the next level.

    Unfolding a new era of search. Create search capabilities that were not available.

     

    Get Microsoft Silverlight

     

    Classic search problem who knows what. Create consumer and economic value. Make
    popular opinion expert opinion

    Mark Zuckerberg. Design products around people and social search. Talks about beginning of Facebook. Organizing information around people. People brains focus on processing information about people.

    Early photos album, early apps were not rich. Socially integrated. High resolution photos and the progress since the beginning of Facebook. Kept building out apps and allows other companies to add to Facebook.

    Social game companies product designed around people. More than just about games, products that are sociallyl integrated. Social search and a great partnership with Microsoft. Microsoft is the underdog and can go all out. Microsoft is a good ally and partner. 

    Mehdi is back. On Facebook you can search results. Not everyone wants to search the web on Facebook. Talks about Bing Social results as a tab in Bing.

    Can see shared links on Facebook and see the buzz.

     What he wants in search results is what his friends think. Now likes and information into search you can’t get anywhere else. We have likes included from friends. You can see stories people like.  More personal search for everyone.
     

    Say you want to find a Stephen Colbert video. I go to Bing, type in video. If my friends have liked it, I can get right to the one I want instead of wading through mashups or anything else.

    Talks about  people search. We’ve collaborated to make things better. If we’re looking for a person it’s not easy. We’re going to bring in people from Facebook. Use a number of social signals. If I’m friends of a friend, then I can see that friend.

    Dan Rose from Facebook  talks about Facebook’s early  partnerships. Knew Microsoft would be a good partner. They have been partners for four years. The important thing is to be flexible.

  • Bing Sees Big Growth In Paid Search

    Bing Sees Big Growth In Paid Search

    The U.S. paid search market saw spending increase 5.8 percent year-over-year in the third quarter, with July growing 4.9 percent, August 5.8 percent and September 6.7 percent, according to a new report from SearchIgnite.

     Bing saw the most spend growth, up 21 percent year-over-year, with market share gains of 6.4 percent in Q3 (up from 6.2% in Q2).  Yahoo saw a 10 percent decline in search ad spend over Q3, with market share falling to 13.4 percent from 15.4 percent in Q2. The report says the drop, along with gain in Bing, is partially due to testing occurring on the combined Yahoo/Bing search alliance.

    SearrchIgnite-Q3.jpg

    Google continued to lead with 80.2 percent of U.S. search spend, up nearly 2 percentage points from Q2, and representing 7.9 percent year-over-year growth. This is the largest market share by Google since SearchIgnite began tracking search engine market share data in Q1 2007. The jump in size marks the largest quarter-over-quarter increase for Google since Q1 2009.

    “Google continued to increase its dominance in the paid search market in the third quarter,” said Roger Barnette, CEO of SearchIgnite.

    “However, the Bing/Yahoo! alliance is performing well for advertisers thus far, and marketers want to see a viable competitor to Google in the market. We feel that there is a real opportunity for Bing to capture significant market share in the near term if these early results continue to play out in the fourth quarter.”

     

  • Bing And Yahoo Lose Search Share In September

     Google captured 72.15 percent of all U.S. searches in September and gained one percent in search share month-over-month, according to a new report from Hitwise.

      Bing powered search received 23.64 percent of searches for the month with Yahoo Search and Bing receiving 13.54 percent and 10.10 percent, respectively. The remaining 65 search engines1 in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis report accounted for 4.22 percent of U.S. searches.

    Hitwise-Search

     Search engines continue to be the primary way that Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing August 2010 with September 2010, shopping and social networking categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

     Google’s percentage of upstream traffic grew for the Automotive, Shopping and Travel categories. Bing saw double-digit growth in four categories — automotive, health, shopping and travel — including a 61 percent increase in the health category.

     Longer search queries — those averaging five to eight words long — decreased 1 percent from August 2010 to September 2010. Seven-word searches and searches of eight or more words increased 1 percent and 4 percent, respectively. One-word searches increased 3 percent. Two-word searches represented the majority of searches, amounting to 24.02 percent of all queries. Shorter search queries — one to four words — were flat from August 2010 to September 2010.

     

     

  • Yahoo Sets Target Dates For Final Bing Ad Transition

    The last step of transitioning Yahoo Search Marketing accounts to the Microsoft Advertising adCenter platform will begin (much) sooner rather than later.  Yahoo announced late yesterday that the process could in fact start on Monday, and the deadline for completion is the last week of this month.

    That means things are continuing to run on – or even ahead of – Yahoo and Microsoft’s original schedule, which is good news for both companies.  They should begin to realize the predicted cost savings in short order as a result.

    As for how marketers should react, a post on the Yahoo Advertising Blog advised, "Make sure that you have an adCenter account in place-complete with campaigns and budget-no later than October 25.  Otherwise, your ads will no longer be displayed on the Yahoo! Search network."

    YahooAnd the post stressed that it’s also important to "[c]ontinue to manage your Yahoo! Search Marketing account until Yahoo! search ad serving completely transitions to adCenter, which will help ensure that your ads continue to fully serve on the Yahoo! Search network."

    Then the only other thing to do is watch out for volume-related experiments, since Yahoo and Microsoft intend to test the system’s technical capabilities.

    Let’s hope this transition goes smoothly and no one’s left behind.

  • Bing To Become Firefox 4 General Search Option

    Most modern software offers users dozens of ways in which they can customize and optimize everything.  The average person probably does little more than pick a pretty background photo or font before abandoning the options menus forever, though.  So it’s potentially quite important that Bing will be included as a standard search option in Firefox 4.

    At the moment, Firefox users who try to look over their search options will only see Google, Yahoo, Amazon.com, Answers.com, Creative Commons, eBay, and Wikipedia as alternatives.  Then there’s an ominous "Manage Search Engines" line that very few people will click.

    In Firefox 4, Bing will be listed right after Google and Yahoo, instead.

    A post on the Mozilla Blog announced and explained this change by stating, "Bing itself offers a user experience that we think users will find valuable, and with its significant rise in popularity over the last year, we will also be including Bing as a general search option for English language users."

    A post on the Bing Search Blog then chimed in, "We hope you enjoy this new choice for your Firefox experience and we look forward to hearing your feedback on how we can continue to improve."

    It should be interesting to see if Bing’s market share rises as a result of the move.  One important thing to remember is that Firefox is caught up in a tough fight with Chrome.

  • What’s Going on in Search and eBusiness

    At SMX East in New York, Bing announced new Webmaster Tools features including a link report. Google also added percent change data to its own Webmaster Tools query reports. More on these here.

    Search Engine Land’s Matt McGee liveblogged a keynote with Yelp COO Geoff Donaker, who shared some interesting stats about Yelp. He says they got about 38 million unique visitors last month on the web site, they have about 13 million reviews, and they have about three million users per month using Yelp apps. He also commented on Yelp’s algorithm, saying, on a business page, recency is one of the primary factors. To quote Matt’s notes, "They want the most recent, trusted reviews showing up top."

    As you may know WebProNews attends a fair amount of industry events to cover in both video and article format. While, we can’t make it to all of them (we couldn’t make it to SMX this time), that doesn’t mean we ignore all the ones we don’t attend. 

    We have a new Events page available here (you will also see an Events tab at the top of  WPN that goes there). This page shows upcoming industry events that we’re keeping our eye on, and which ones we’re actually attending. 

    WebProNews reporter Abby Johnson also keeps a blog on the page. As time goes on, she will offer insights beyond her video interviews as she attends various events. 

    WebProNews Events

    The Inbound Marketing Summit starts tomorrow in Boston. WebProNews is a media partner of this event and WPN’s Mike McDonald will be reporting. Then late next week, Abby and WPN’s Chris Crum (and the rest of our video crew) will be heading to Vegas for BlogWorld (where WPN is an official video provider). Shortly after that, WPN’s Mike Sachoff will be hitting Search Engine Strategies Chicago. 

    Check back often to see what events are on our radar, and stay tuned to WebProNews and WebProNews Videos for coverage. 

  • Microsoft Joins Yahoo In Criticizing Google Instant

    Many people laughed when Microsoft chose to call Bing a "decision engine," but the logic behind that name was apparent today when Microsoft exec Yusuf Mehdi spoke at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference.  Mehdi indicated that he thinks Google Instant represents a step in the wrong direction.

    Mehdi, the senior vice president of the Online Audience Business, said according to Juan Carlos Perez, "Both companies are focused on the notion of improving [search] performance for people.  Where we’re different is that for us it’s about speed to task completion.  It’s about getting what you want accomplished, it’s not about getting a lot more results."

    That’s a smart concept.  Think of it this way: it’s nice when a mechanic knows the make, and model, and year of your vehicle and orders parts accordingly.  It’d be less helpful if he showed you a selection of parts for all cars of a certain make and all cars of a certain model year before landing upon the right thing.

    Yusuf MehdiOf course, in practice, Google Instant can save people a few keystrokes, and it’s possible for Google users to just turn the feature off, as well.

    Anyway, Mehdi’s comments are reminiscent of something Shashi Seth, the senior vice president of Yahoo Search Products, recently said, so it looks like neither Bing nor Yahoo is too jealous of Google’s tech.

    As for a couple side projects Bing is working on, Perez wrote, "Mehdi also showed Bing’s upcoming home page, viewed with the company’s latest browser IE 9, streaming a full-screen video of whales swimming in the ocean . . . .  He also showed the ability for people to zoom deeply into a Bing full-screen background image of Mount Rushmore."

  • Steve Ballmer On Schmidt: “We’re His Best Competitor”

    Last week, Eric Schmidt stated in an interview that Bing, not Apple or Facebook, is Google’s biggest competitor.  Now Steve Ballmer has responded, essentially agreeing and indicating that Bing will continue to innovate and pose a threat.

    Microsoft’s CEO told Sharon Pian Chan with respect to Schmidt’s comment, "He’s right! . . .  We’re his best competitor, and we’re a very good competitor and we’re going to do a very good job."

    Later, Ballmer added, "In a sense, because we have lower share, it’s almost easier for us to try new things.  They have to sort of stay conservative, they gotta make a lot of money. . . .  Boom, boom, boom, boom, we’re just moving, floating, differentiating. . . .  That’s our job to be the disrupter in this business, and we’re going to work hard at it."

    An example of this might be Bing’s image search, which Google later copied to a degree.  Also, Bing Maps had its Bird’s Eye view long before Google Maps got into 45° imagery.

    Of course, Google isn’t a completely stationary target, as the launch of Google Instant should prove.  And plenty of people would argue that having a large market share is a good thing, not a handicap.

    It shouldn’t be too long before comScore, Hitwise, and Nielsen are able to weigh in on the state of the search market in September, anyway, and show which engine made the most progress in the fight’s latest round.

  • Microsoft Updates Bing App for iPhone, iPod Touch

    Microsoft has released an update for its Bing for Mobile app for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. The update comes with some new features for travel and Bing Maps. 

    "We know consumers love the Price Predicator on the PC, and now they can find it along with other great Bing Travel features on their iPhone," says Andy Chu  of Bing for Mobile. "From the Bing for Mobile iPhone app’s home screen, simply click on Travel. You can now see top deals from your home airport as well as last minute and weekend deals, and using the interactive Deals calendar, you can easily see when those great prices are available. If you have a specific trip in mind, you can use flight search to find a great fare.  Utilize the ‘estimated price’ preview to see fares for alternate dates or airports, and look to the Price Predictor to know when to buy your airfare. Or if you’re already headed for the airport, use Bing Travel’s flight status feature to see if your flight is on time."

    Bing for Mobile for iPhone gets update with new travel features

    "Looking at a map on your phone with multiple layers of information could be quite difficult," adds Chu.  "With this release of the iPhone app, we have redesigned the mapping experience from the ground up.  We enhanced the backdrop so information on the map such as traffic details, business listings, pushpins, labels, etc. could pop.  We increased the font size corresponding to larger roads and added neighborhood labels so you can easily identify and convey locations in cities.  We have also added what’s Nearby with enhanced map and labels so you can ‘fly’ through a neighborhood and quickly find a local listing.  And best of all, you can easily switch between the map view and the list view on the map."

    The update is available through iTunes. 

    Last week, Microsoft announced a Bing for Mobile update for BlackBerry, with more Bing Maps functionality, an updated home screen and a launcher for local, maps, directions and news.

  • Is Bing More of a Threat to Google Than Facebook or Apple?

    According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Bing is its main competitor – not Facebook or Apple. He sat down with Alan Murray of the Wall Street Journal, who was kind enough to post an embeddable video of the conversation. 

    Do you think Bing is Google’s biggest threat? Share your thoughts here.

    "What’s interesting is we think of neither [Facebook or Apple] as a competitive threat…our competitor is Bing. And it’s interesting, for years, people have asked about Microsoft and everyone has forgot about Bing."  

    He calls Bing a "well run, highly competitive search engine". He doesn’t get into Bing’s partnership with Yahoo, but that clearly has to be considered a big part of Google’s headache in search competition.  

    When asked about being more concerned about Bing 5-10 years down the road, he said, "Facebook is too early to tell. Facebook is a company of consequence, and they’re doing an excellent job building a social network." He also says that people forget Apple is a partner of Google. 

    Schmidt talks about a number of other topics, such as privacy, China, his thoughts on the "web is dead" article, President Obama, social media, and more. 

    (HT: SAI)

    Who should Google be most concerned about: Google, Facebook, or Apple? Somebody else? Tell us what you think.

  • Bing for Mobile for BlackBerry Gets Update

    Microsoft announced an update for its Bing for Mobile BlackBerry app. The app can now access Bing Maps by pressing the Bing Maps icon from a user’s BlackBerry device. 
    In addition to this, the home screen has been updated, and a launcher has been added, so local, maps, directions and news can all be accessed faster. 

     

    Bing for Mobile for BlackBerry
    The app supports the following devices:

     

    BlackBerry Curve 8500
    BlackBerry Curve 2 8520/8530
    BlackBerry Bold 9000
    BlackBerry Tour 9600
    BlackBerry Bold 9650 (Essex)
    BlackBerry Bold 9700 (Bold2)
    BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8200
    BlackBerry Storm 9530
    BlackBerry Storm 9550 (Storm2)

     

    The app can be downloaded from m.bing.com from the device. Verizon users will be notified with an update. Microsoft has a video about the app available here.
     
  • Bing Rewards Program Launches

    Bing Rewards Program Launches

    Bing users and lovers of bribes, this could be your kind of day.  Something called Bing Rewards has launched in preview form, and the program is designed to help people acquire stuff in exchange for helping Bing in a few small ways.

    Remember the way candy bar, popcorn, and wrapping paper sales worked as a kid?  Bing Rewards operates in a similar fashion.  Users will earn credits for completing tasks ("searching on Bing, setting your homepage to Bing or trying out new features of Bing"), and then those credits can be redeemed for different prizes.

    To be clear: this program is not an exact replacement for Bing Cashback.  Gift cards are as close as any of the prizes get to real money.

    Still, between gift cards (to mainstream establishments like Amazon and Starbucks), movies, kitchen accessories, and some gadgets, the selection of prizes isn’t bad.  It’s possible to redeem credits towards charitable donations, as well.

    So here are the three other factors people might view as catches: first, participating in Bing Rewards means downloading the Bing Bar.  It’ll track users’ credits and list what offers are available.

    Second, Internet Explorer is required.

    Third, in the same way it may have been necessary to sell 12,000 candy bars in order to claim a simple pocketknife, the Bing credit-to-prize exchange rate looks a little high in some cases.  Participants will need 2,315 credits in order to get a 2 GB SD card, for example.

  • Bing Suggests Twitter Users Based on Searches

    Bing has launched a new feature for Bing Social, which recommends users to follow on Twitter, based on your search activity. Enter a query, and it will give you three users it thinks you might like to follow based on that query. 

    A representative for Bing tells WebProNews, "It was developed to help consumers identify the most influential people to watch on Twitter, based on their specific interests. It is currently available within Bing Social, appearing in the right-hand panel of your screen."
    It gives recommended Twitterers with labels like "influential" or "popular". The biggest problem I see with it is that it only lists three, and I don’t see any options to see more. If I’m really interested in a topic, it would be nice to find more than three people to follow. Luckily, there’s always Twellow (shameless plug). 

     

    "People Recommendation works by recommending new people to follow on Twitter both based on their influence as well as their popularity, as related to the content of your query. For example, search Bing Social for a new movie and actors from the film will appear in the recommendation column with direct links to their Twitter page," says the representative.
     
    Bing Social - Twitter Recommendations

     

    The feature should be somewhat useful for the casual Bing user, who actually goes to the Bing Social site, as the feature doesn’t appear to be integrated with regular Bing search, at least at this point. 

     

    Twitter has been doing a lot lately to increase user discoverability. The company probably appreciates this Bing feature.
    After a few questions, the Bing rep tells us, "I don’t have anything else to share about future social features/functions (deals with networks like FB, results appearing in main search results page, etc), but there will be more to come in the social arena as this latest feature is a continuation of Microsoft’s goal to develop solutions to use real-time content to augment traditional web search technology."

  • Lots Happening with Bing Maps Today

    "Bing Maps just got more useful for developers, bus and train commuters and education advocates everywhere," a representative for Bing tells WebProNews. She is referring to a series of announcements Microsoft made today regarding Bing Maps. 

    The company released two new Bing mapping apps, made additions to the Bing Transit Map, and released the final Windows Phone 7 SDK which features Bing and Microsoft Advertising.

    Education

    Bing’s  two new mapping apps are part of the Our School Needs campaign, which is focused on supporting schools across the U.S. through funding and volunteer efforts.

    The first app is for DonorsChoose.org. It helps people find and support classroom projects in their community. "The app identifies and highlights school projects that are looking for funding," the rep explains.  "People can explore and donate by location, subject area, funding required and other criteria. Schools, school districts and donors can also embed a DonorsChoose Bing Map in their own website making it easy to spread the word."

    The second app is simply  Bing Education. It’s designed to help people find opportunities to help students in their neighborhoods. "In addition to features found in the DonorsChoose.org app this app displays local school information and donation, mentor, and volunteer opportunities in the area," she says. "The app features opportunities from Mentor Pro, Great Schools, and DonorsChoose.org."

    Transit

    As far as additions to Bing Transit Map, bus and rail transit directions are now alongside driving and walking directions. The transit directions will first be available in major U.S. metropolitan areas such as Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles, and will roll out to additional cities in the future. "The information in the Bing Transit map is provided by various transportation agencies in major metropolitan regions," says the rep. "Please note, Bing Transit only works on AJAX supported sites."

    Bing Maps Transit

    More details and a complete list of available cities can be found here.

    Windows Phone 7 SDK

    Bing Maps, which is of course the default mapping service on Windows Phone 7, is now fully integrated into the Windows Phone 7 Developer Toolkit with the Bing Maps Control SDK. Bing says this makes it simpler for developers to build Bing mobile mapping apps. "Like all other Bing Maps APIs, the Windows Phone 7 control is free for use in consumer-facing mobile applications," the rep says. More info on Windows Phone Developer tools are here. More on the Advertising SDK specifically here.

  • Bing Takes Advantage of IE9’s Capabilities

    As you probably know, Microsoft launched the Internet Explorer 9 (beta) publicly today. It can be downloaded here. 

    The company also took the opportunity to show off some new enhancements to Bing, to accompany its new browser. Taking advantage of the HTML5 capabilities of IE9, they’ve added some nice new features that are exclusive to Bing use in that particular browser (at least initially). 

    The coolest of the new features, while having little to do with search, is what Bing has done with its homepage. It uses HTML5 to replace the homepage image with a homepage video or an image that you can zoom in and out of. You can see this in action (along with the other new feature) in the following video.

    Bing Gets New IE9-Specific Features

    Other features are more related to search. These include:

    – Smooth transitions from one screen to the next, as you search

    – Previews of images, videos and text are bigger and bolder

    – Bing has an IE9 "jump list", which lets users search various Bing categories like travel or shopping right from the Windows 7 taskbar. 

    – New smooth scrolling that keeps a search box in place and related searches at the side, in case you need to refine as you scroll. 

    – Quick Tabs and Visual Search transitions in a new app-like experience

    The new Bing features for IE9 will be available in preview format for users of IE9 soon. No exact time table was given, but there will be a preview site that users will be able to play around with later this month.

    Are the new Internet Explorer features enough to get you to use Bing? Are the new Bing features enough to get you to use the new Internet Explorer? Are you using both? Neither? Share your thoughts.

  • Will Bing Get Access to Facebook “Like” Data?

    Facebook and Microsoft are reportedly talking about expanding their search partnership. Currently, Bing supplies web results for Facebook’s own search feature. These talks could lead to Bing getting Facebook "like" data for use in its own search engine. 

    The news comes from Kara Swisher, who cites "several people with knowledge of the situation". She writes, "While the deal is not closed and talks could end without result, such information might yield a treasure trove of insight for both search users and advertisers. That’s because it represents search based on what people are actually interested in rather than just crunching massive amounts of information and muscling it into something useful."

    Her sources said that the partnership would never offer up any Facebook data that isn’t publicly available. 

    Facebook's Open Graph

    Naturally, if Bing is able to get this information, it will have one important piece of the web that Google doesn’t, but that’s not to say that Google wouldn’t eventually get the same data. Adam Ostrow at Mashable reminds us that both search engines got public data from Facebook for their realtime search initiatives. 

    Personally, I’m more interested in what Facebook intends to do with the data itself. The company has been testing a feature in which it shows all liked articles in its search results. The results themselves are shown, at least partially, based on number of likes and the number of friends who liked particular pieces of content. 

    Facebook surpassed Google in time spent on site, according to a recent report.

  • Microsoft Extends adCenter Support Hours During Transition

    Microsoft just announced that it is extending its support hours for adCenter during its paid search transition. 

    "Whether you prefer to tweet, post a question in our forums or pick up the phone and speak to a real person, you’ve got several options for getting help with all things adCenter," says Microsoft’s Tina Kelleher. 

    The transition is of course already underway, but may take some time to be completed globally. Right now, they have contact information posted for the US, UK, Canada, France, and Singapore markets. 

    Microsoft Extends AdCenter Support

    Nielsen announced today that Bing has surpassed Yahoo in search market share for the United State for the first time, and that is not even taking the partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo into consideration. 

    Microsoft began powering Yahoo’s organic search results on August 24.