WebProNews

Tag: Bing

  • Time to Start Placing More Emphasis on Bing SEO

    Google SEO vs Bing SEO has been a topic of discussion throughout the industry since Bing was launched. The topic got some heavy play last week at the SMX Advanced conference, and with Yahoo and Bing coming together sometime this year, online marketers are going to want to start thinking harder about incorporating Bing into their strategies if they are not already doing so.

    Do you have a strategy for Bing SEO? Yahoo? Discuss here.

    WebProNews spoke with Janet Driscoll Miller of Search Mojo out at SMX, who presented on this topic. As she notes, some businesses actually see better results from Bing than they do from Google, and when Yahoo starts using Bing for search, Bing’s share of the search market is going to grow dramatically (it also powers search in Facebook, let’s not forget).

    Janet discusses a tool Bing has in its Webmaster tools that lets you see the types of links that point into you, and lets you look at their value, so you can go after similar links.

    Bing is actually redesigning its Webmaster Tools, however. WebProNews also spoke with Bing’s Eric Gilmore about this.

    The point is, Google’s Webmaster Tools have been very helpful for site-owners over the years in their conquest for better rankings. Now that Bing is growing in significance, its tools are going to be helpful as well.

    Have you used Bing’s webmaster tools? Did they help your rankings? Comment here.

  • Nielsen Puts Both Yahoo, Bing Up In May

    Right on schedule, Nielsen’s provided another look at the U.S. search market, and although absolutely nothing changed at the top – Google’s market share didn’t fluctuate at all between April to May – something interesting did occur last month as Yahoo and Bing gained ground.

    YahooHere’s a little bit of historical info in case past stats don’t come straight to mind: ever since Microsoft and Yahoo first announced their partnership, there’s been a fairly steady tradeoff in market share between them.  Which is a bad thing from both companies’ perspectives, since it implies Microsoft’s paying for technology it doesn’t need.

    Nielsen’s data covering May indicates the companies each have something to bring to the table, however.

    Nielsen determined that Yahoo managed to increase its market share by 0.3 percent on a month-over-month basis, and Bing increased its share by 0.1 percent.  That left the two organizations with market shares of 13.8 percent and 13.0 percent, respectively.

    Bing logoSo now Yahoo and Bing are a tiny bit closer to Google (with its market share of 65.1 percent), and have put more distance between them and fourth-place AOL.  (AOL was in fact the big loser in May, getting left with a market share of 2.1 percent after seeing its standing drop 0.4 percent.)

    It’ll be very interesting to see if Yahoo and Bing can sustain this growth.  For that matter, even continuing to hold Google back would count as an accomplishment.

  • Bing Talks New Webmaster Tools

    Bing Talks New Webmaster Tools

    Microsoft made some significant announcements related to Bing at SMX Advanced in Seattle. Later this summer, Bing will offer a redesigned version of Bing Webmaster Tools based on feedback from webmasters. The tools will provide webmasters with a simplified, more intuitive experience that delivers a comprehensive view of how Bing indexes their sites, a representative for Bing tells WebProNews.

     Highlights include:

    – The Bing Webmaster Tools have been re-engineered from the ground up to offer more data, including enhanced charting functionality, through a modern, improved user interface. The new tools remain web-based, and basic functionality will be available through most web browsers.

    – The tools assess performance in several key areas, including crawl, index and traffic. Each area will offer granular data going back as far as six months with enhanced, on-the-fly adjustable charting, enabling webmasters to focus on the timeline trends that are most meaningful to them.

    – The update also includes a new experience built with Silverlight, featuring rich visual charts to help webmasters quickly analyze several months of data to identify trends and drive insights.

    Update: Bing’s Eric Gilmore tells us about the new Bing Webmaster Tools in the following interview:

     More here.

    Bing also announced social search, which uses public updates from Fan Pages and aggregated data from public updates to deliver real-time results. Doug Caverly talks more about this here.

  • Bing Launches Facebook Maps App

    Bing has launched a new Facebook Maps apps, which a Bing representative tells WebProNews uses Facebook APIs to pull in your friend’s information from Facebook. It lets you see your Facebook friends right in Bing Maps.

    With the My Friends map app, users can view profile pictures, status updates and write on someone’s wall, right from within the application. To use this, just start the app, log with you Facebook ID, and select "allow" to allow Bing Maps to connect to your profile (and to get your friend list).

    After you’re logged in, any friends who have a "current city" listed in their Facebook profile, will have their profile picture pinned to the map.

    Bing Maps Facebook app

    If you click on your friends’ pictures on the map, it will show their status.

    "We also have the de-clustering algorithm in place so if you have a number of friends in one place it will spin their photos into a circle and tether them back to the location with a line," explains Bing’s Chris Pendleton. "This is a great new way to watch your Facebook friends move around the world."

    Some Facebook users have been waiting for the company to launch location features. This was widely expected to be launched at F8, Facebook’s developer conference in April, but that didn’t happen (instead, they launched the game-changing Open Graph).

    This isn’t that location feature, and it doesn’t exactly make up for it. It possibly could in some ways if Facebook users updated their "current city" every time they made a status update, but this is only part of the "information" section in the user profile, which most people probably don’t update unless they move (although I’m sure some hardcore users update it more frequently). Either way, it’s not exactly reliable for seeing exactly where Facebook users are at any given moment.

    Still, the app is interesting enough to take a look at, as it does put into perspective where your friends reside.

  • Google Does Bing Imitation With Background Images

    We’ll admit right here: you probably already have a very good idea what this article’s about.  But if you don’t, please visit Google.com and take in whatever desert or field of flowers is on display as a background image.  And now consider yourself up to speed on the fact that Google’s mimicking Bing.

    That’s one hard-to-avoid conclusion, anyway.  Another is that Google’s actually decided to drive searchers to use Bing (compare the "synthetic lollipops that hurt your eyes" image to the gorgeous picture of Belem Tower and see if you don’t feel the same way).

    Google’s official explanation is that it’s trying to promote a certain feature, though.  Marissa Mayer stated on the Official Google Blog, "Last week, we announced a new feature that lets you add a favorite photo or image to the background of your Google.com homepage.  To provide you with an extra bit of inspiration, we’ve collaborated with several well-known artists, sculptors and photographers to create a gallery of background images you can use to personalize your Google homepage."

    Then Mayer got to the point, adding, "We’ll be featuring these images as backgrounds on the Google homepage over the next 24 hours."

    So this rather unfortunate experiment should be over soon.  Not soon enough for many people, granted, but perhaps far too soon for the liking of executives at Microsoft.

    UPDATE: Things have returned to normal ahead of schedule. 

     

  • Bing Offers New Take On Social Search

    This afternoon, Bing will take a big step forward in terms of social search.  Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President of the Online Audience Business at Microsoft, announced at SMX Advanced that a Bing site will start to integrate information from Facebook.

    Bing logoBing.com/social – which isn’t live at the time of this writing – is supposed to build on the connection Microsoft has been establishing with Twitter over the past year or so.  And indeed, rather than just return celebrities’ profiles or a stream of status updates, it should utilize "the full Facebook firehose with non-pages content."

    In an email to WebProNews, a Microsoft representative explained, "bing.com/social uses public updates from Fan Pages and aggregated data from public updates to deliver real-time results and enables users to make better decisions by tapping into micro-content generated by people across the world."

    No one needs to worry about their thoughts being paraded in front of random searchers, however, because Microsoft took some precautions even where public updates are concerned.  Just popular links, and not any names, photos, or user-sourced text, will be shown.

    All in all, this arrangement sounds rather impressive.  Bing.com/social appears to stand a good chance of winning a following outside search- and tech-centric communities, too, since Facebook remains so much more popular than Twitter.

  • Bing Becomes iPhone Search Option

    Although Steve Ballmer did not, as some outlandish rumors asserted he would, make an appearance at WWDC 2010 today, Steve Jobs did say something important concerning Microsoft’s search engine.  Jobs indicated that Bing will now be an official search option on the iPhone.

    Bing logoThis could constitute a significant win for Microsoft in a couple of ways.  It and Apple haven’t always been on friendly terms, of course, and Apple and Google used to be extremely close, so the fact that Apple has started to accommodate Bing might mean tensions are thawing.

    (Skeptical?  Okay, but consider that the Justin Long-John Hodgman Apple-PC ads have been retired, too.)

    Then there’s the simple matter of attracting users.  If Bing’s presented as an easy-to-choose alternative to Google rather than left off the menu, it stands to reason that more people will give Bing a shot.  And according to Joshua Topolsky, Jobs even said during his keynote, "Microsoft has done a great job on this.  Check it out, it’s kinda cool."

    Note that Google remains the default search engine on the iPhone, though, so Apple and Jobs don’t appear to have had a total change of heart regarding the search giant.

  • Bing Maps Gets New Features, SDK for Apps

    Bing Maps Gets New Features, SDK for Apps

    Microsoft announced some new additions to Bing maps today. These additions, the company says, will benefit both developers and end-users.

    The first addition is that of a software development kit for building Map apps for Bing Maps. "Bing Map Apps are web services that are being integrated as an application layer within Bing Maps," says Bing Maps Tech Evangelist Chris Pendleton. "With the release of the SDK, developers can now create their own map apps built on top of Bing Maps and hosted on bing.com/maps/explore."

    That means we’re likely to see a lot of cool new ways to use Bing Maps. Microsoft has already been offering some interesting Bing Maps apps on its own. For example, Twitter Maps shows tweets from specific areas:

    Twitter Maps on Bing

    Microsoft has also released the following new features for Bing Maps:

    1. Bing Map App Ratings
    2. Photosynth Panoramas
    3. Map Overlays
    4. Action Bar
    5. Reverse Address Lookup
    6. Right-Click Menu
    7. Full Screen Maps
    8. Breadcrumb
    9. Brandfinder

    More details for each of these features can be found here.

    Finally, the Bing Maps Platform is expanding its interfaces to include a REST API. This provides geocoding, maps, and routing capabilities. In addition, they’ve introduced a Spatial Data API for reverse geocoding locations in batches, giving developers the ability to do even more with apps based on Bing Maps.

  • Microsoft Gives Up On Bing Cashback

    Bribery, while useful, isn’t always an effective means of obtaining a large user base, Microsoft has discovered.  Microsoft announced today that it will retire the Bing cashback program because not enough people stuck around after taking advantage of it.

    The program did work in some respects, helping Microsoft establish relationships with a lot of different businesses.  A post on the Bing Search Blog even stated, "[W]e had over a thousand merchant partners delivering great offers to customers and seeing great ROI on their campaigns . . ."

    Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President of the Online Audience Business Group at Microsoft, admitted, though, "But after a couple of years of trying, we did not see the broad adoption that we had hoped for."

    So the last day individuals will be able to earn cashback by shopping with Bing will be July 30th (at 9:00 PM PST, to be exact).  Then users will have one year to claim their cashback sums before the whole program is terminated.

    Bargain hunters can’t be expected to take this news well.  Still, Microsoft fans have reason to be pleased since Mehdi said the company will start to channel its energy (and money) into different and more effective approaches to attracting and retaining users.

  • Google and Bing Launch Health Map Applications

    Today both Google and Bing released some health-related map applications. These releases coincide with the Institute of Medicine and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hosting their Community Health Data Forum event.

    Google’s contribution includes a Google Fusion Tables project and customized map showing information from HHS. For example, you can see a map of "heart friendly" and "people friendly" hospitals.

    Google Health Map

    "It’s important to note that the science behind measuring the quality of hospitals and health care in general is still evolving, so we can’t make definitive conclusions from this data," says Google’s Chief Health Strategist, Roni Zeiger, MD.  "However, this kind of transparency will lead to discussion, questions, and analysis which we hope will improve choices and outcomes."

    Microsoft launched a Bing Maps app called Bing Health maps. This also uses data from HHS. It provides stats for the U.S. states by county.

    Bing Health Map App

    "Bing Health Maps is very straightforward to use – (1) Select a state and, (2) Select a Community Health Indicator," explains Bing’s Chris Pendleton. "The map will re-center on the respective state and color-code the counties within that state based on unit-based reporting. You can select health indicators such as Birth Indicators (low birth weight, premature births, births to women under 18, etc.); Death Measures (homicide, lung cancer, stroke, etc.) or Health Risk Factors (obesity, smokers, high blood pressure, etc.). If the opacity doesn’t suit your fancy there’s a slider to increase or decrease it."

    "Once the map is loaded with the respective counties shaded you can click on any county to get all of the factors listed under the Community Health Indicator list all in one popup for that county," continues Pendleton. "This app is jam-packed with information! Let’s say you’re looking to move California because you think everyone there is a health nut. Turn on the Bing Health Maps to see which counties are most healthy. Then, when you’re deciding to be a SoCal or NorCal person (the war wages on) you can fire up the Oodle Map App to check out rentals in the respective area. Or, check out the Twitter Map App and filter based on keywords like “running,” “hiking,” or “surfing” and you’ll finally find out that SoCal is just better since people aren’t Tweeting – they’re actually out running, hiking and surfing."

    More about the HHS Community Health Data Initiative can be found here.

  • MSN Homepage Gets Bing Prominence Tweak

    Update 2:  Microsoft has decided to give Bing a little bit more prominence on the recently redesigned MSN homepage. Probably not a bad idea, considering MSN.com had nearly 90 million unique visitors in March, according to Compete. Bing had 52 million.

    Update: After some delay, Microsoft is reportedly now rolling out the new MSN home page design over the next couple weeks.

    Original Article: MSN.com gets about 85 million unique monthly visitors in the US alone, according to Compete. That’s significantly more than AOL.com. So now that Microsoft has unveiled a redesign to it, it stands to reason that a lot of people are going to be affected by it. Microsoft calls the new design MSN’s most significant home page redesign in over a decade.

    "Now is the time to clean up the mess on the Web — people need less clutter and less hassle to find what matters most to them," said Erik Jorgensen, corporate vice president, Microsoft. "Microsoft is uniquely invested in search, media experiences and technical innovation. Combining these assets to deliver our new MSN home page is a tremendous win for customers and advertisers."

    What do you think of the new design? Share your opinions here.

    The new design pays significant focus to local, Bing, social networks, and news. Coinciding with the announcement of the redesign was the unveiling of MSN Local Edition. This is a section of MSN that gives you local news, weather, sports, movies and events, restaurants, gas, traffic, a directory, lottery numbers, etc.

    MSN Local Edition

    The Bing integration with the new MSN is deeper. It’s now used as the core search technology throughout the home page in areas like shopping, travel, and local. It is also used as a way to highlight hot topics, trends, and people.

    There is a clean integration of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, as well as Microsoft’s own Windows Live "What’s New," which aggregates up to 50 web activities from various places like Yelp, Flickr, Pandora, etc.

    MSN - Facebook and Twitter Tabs

    "Customers told us they want the latest information from their favorite sources, their friends and the breadth of the Web — and the new MSN home page delivers via a fresh new look and new features," Jorgensen said. "Today is an important transformation for MSN, and it’s just the beginning."

    There is also an emphasis on de-cluttering the home page. Microsoft says there are 50% fewer links than on the previous version. Here’s what the whole thing looks like:

    MSN Redesign

    The design is not live on a wide scale yet. It will be rolling out gradually over the coming weeks. It is, however available as a preview here.

    On a related note, Microsoft is finally launching MSN Music this week. The launch has been postponed since July.

    Related Articles:

    > MySpace, MSN Now Said To Be In Talks

    > Microsoft Partners With Advance Internet On Local Ad Deal

    > Bing Gets More Mobile Features in The US

  • Bing Maps Adds Three Useful Apps

    Bing Maps, which was already impressive in quite a few ways, has gotten better again with the addition of three new apps.  A distance calculator, gas prices tool, and parking finder promise to help people plan trips and go about their daily lives more efficiently.

    The distance calculator might be the least interesting app; pretty much every mapping service is able to tell the number of miles (or kilometers) between Point A and Point B, after all.  Still, this app can handle journeys with multiple legs, and take into account whether a person’s flying or driving.

    A handier app is then the gas prices tool.  It shows how much different stations are charging, and since it’s bundled right in with all of Bing Maps’s other offerings, could be a very convenient way of saving money.

    Finally, although not a lot of whole cities are covered (just 16), the parking finder app may be able to save people from parking tickets, door dings, and vandalism when they’re visiting a number of airports (67).  A post on the Bing Maps Blog explained, "Once you select a parking lot by clicking on the respective pin on the map, you’ll get contextual information such as address, hours and a phone number.  You also get information about the type of lot such as outdoor and self-parking plus the payment types they accept."

    Furthermore, "There are links to view photos of the respective lot (on BestParking.com) or view the facility on BestParking.com," and "[c]licking the ‘Calculate Rate’ link for a parking lot will bring up a calculator where you enter your start and end date and times to estimate how much it will cost to park at all the lots listed on the map given the respective time!"

    These apps are all free, and don’t require any downloads so long as your computer’s already outfitted with Silverlight.  Just visit Bing Maps, agree to "Explore the new Bing Maps," and then click the "Map Apps" button.

  • New Bing Features for Windows Phones

    New Bing Features for Windows Phones

    Bing is launching two new updates for the Bing app on Windows phones today. "The first is a redesign of the home page, which gives people faster access to common searches such as Movies and Traffic," a representative for Bing tells WebProNews.

    "The second feature is voice-guided navigation for Windows 6.x phones, powered by Bing Maps and Microsoft Tellme’s voice application," he says. "The navigation feature is available to users who have a Windows phone on Sprint, T-Mobile or AT&T."

    Key features according to Bing include:

    – Faster and more informed navigation decisions

    – More flexibility with multiple route choices

    – Voice guidance for a safer way to travel

    – Real time traffic updates to stay informed on the go

    Users of the navigation feature can hit the "navigate" button, and Bing will calculate the route and guide them as they drive. They can select the fastest or shortest route, and choose whether or not to avoid traffic and tolls.

    Bing app updates for windows phone - navigation feature

    Users can also get a map or list of directions, and see arrows/hear alerts to know which way to turn as the journey progresses.

    Specific phones that are compatible with the navigation feature include: HTC Fuze, HTC Pure, HTC HD2, HTC Tilt 2, HTC Touch Diamond 2, HTC Touch HD, HTC Touch Pro, HTC Touch Pro 2, Motorola Q9c, Samsung Jack, Samsung Omnia II, Samsung Propel, and T-Mobile Dash 3G.

  • Bing Brings Social Experience to Shopping Results

    Microsoft has added a new social sharing feature to Bing Shopping, which lets people share products with members of their social circle via Facebook, Twitter, or email. "Folks can now ask for input before they make that important purchase," a representative for Bing tells WebProNews.

    "A lot of us don’t shop alone. Going to the mall is often a social thing, so why should shopping online be any different? 75% of shoppers seek advice from others even when shopping online and now Bing shoppers can too!" the Bing team says.

    Bing Adds Social Sharing features to Shopping results

    Bing says it expects people to use the feature to get feedback from their friends not only on pricing, but about things like if an article of clothing would "look good on them" or if there is a better model for a product, etc.

    Bing has had sharing features for different kinds of results like news and entertainment for a while, but share features for shopping make could in fact make online shopping a little bit more like going out with friends or accessing a physically unavailable friend whose opinion you value.

    I’m a little surprised they didn’t incorporate the Facebook Like Button into this feature, but at least they still respect the fact that people still like more private methods of sharing like email.

  • More Relevant Results: Google or Bing?

    Remember when Bing launched its recipe results? Now Google has launched a similar feature with recipe rich snippets. "For example, if you were searching for an easy to make thai mango salad, you can now see user ratings, preparation time, and a picture of the dish directly in search result snippets," explains Google. It may not be incredibly far-fetched to suggest that maybe Bing’s offering nudged such a feature into development, whether or not Google would admit this.

    Rich Recipe Snippet from Google

    This story isn’t about recipes though. It’s about the major search engines’ quest for gaining or keeping you as a user. It feels like Bing has been around quite a while now, but in reality, it hasn’t even been out for a year. Right out of the box, Bing seemed to make Google want to improve. Google is even in the process of testing redesigned search results pages that borrow some design characteristics from Bing.

    Where are You Getting the More Relevant Results? Let us know.

    Both Google and Bing still have their relevancy issues. We recently looked at an example of a query for "matt cutts" on Google (though we compared them to Yahoo rather than Bing, as Yahoo mentioned the same query in a blog post). Frankly, Google’s results left a bit to be desired. It wasn’t that that they were bad exactly, but personalized results pushed the more relevant results further down the page, and Matt’s Facebook profile was MIA, despite Facebook being one of the most popular sites on the web, a good result for a search on a person’s name (It was in the first few on Yahoo’s results).

    Microsoft may like consumers to think that Bing gives all the right answers. Those commercials would certainly seem to suggest they have a leg up over the competition in that regard, but they’ve got their own relevance issues. For example, for an article I was writing recently, I was looking for that site Bing has that showed all of the latest features they’ve released. I couldn’t remember the name of it, so I searched (on Bing) for "latest bing features". Given Bing’s philosophy of wanting to provide answers, I would expect to easily find what I was looking for through such a query, but instead the first organic result is an article called "The Latest News from Bing" from November of 2009.

    Bing Latest Features query

    Search Diversifying

    In the latest search market reports, Google has lost a little bit of market share. Bing is gaining (and has the potential to gain a lot more for reasons discussed here). Another thing Bing has going for it, or Google has working against it rather, is that search itself is becoming much more diversified as a result of mobile, social media, and geo-location. People are simply using more ways to find the information they’re looking for. It’s not that they’re not using Google anymore. It’s that they’re maybe using it less for certain types of queries. For example, where someone may have once used Google to search for a movie showtime, maybe they now have an app for that on their phone.

    Is a Bingized Yahoo Good for Yahoo Search?

    At some point in the near future, Bing’s results will be taking over Yahoo’s results to some extent. While most will agree that the Microsoft-Yahoo deal will be good for search advertising. Another question would be is it good for people who use Yahoo to search? Are Bing’s search results better than Yahoo’s? I’m not so sure, looking at the "matt cutts" example. For the "latest bing features" example, however, I can’t say that Yahoo’s results are really any better than Bing’s.

    I realize that just looking at a couple of examples is kind of grasping at straws and are hardly representative of all queries in general, but it’s still a question worth pondering. Are Bing’s results better than Yahoo’s? Does it even matter? Will the average Yahoo user even notice a difference?

    Google’s Edge in Innovation

    Google still seems to have the edge in getting out new and interesting features. Take real-time search. Microsoft and Google both announced deals with Twitter around the same time. Microsoft even had one with Facebook too. While Bing had a separate destination relatively quickly, where users could search Twitter with Bing, they didn’t integrate real-time Twitter results into Bing results themselves. Google did this after a little while with not only Twitter, but many other sources to make up its real-time search results. Just this week, Bing announced that it is starting to include such results, and only from Twitter, and only to a small subset of users in the U.S. Google is even doing Twitter archive search now.

    That’s not to say that Bing doesn’t do some things first (like the recipes for example), but Bing has a lot more to prove (and in all fairness, they do regularly release new features). Google is already established. Bing is still trying to win people over.

    Google is frequently making acquisitions to better its search technologies. Just this week, Google acquired Pink, to better its Google Goggles product, which lets people search with their phones by simply pointing their cameras toward an object. They recently acquired Aardvark, a social Q&A search service (a space that is growing rapidly – see AnswerBag/MerchantCircle news for one of the latest examples).

    Wrapping Up

    With regards to relevance, you’re going to find better results on Google, Yahoo, and Bing on a query-by-query basis. In reality, none of them deliver perfect results all the time, and that is why the diversifying of how people search is likely to continue, and for the better. The search engines can work to personalize results all they want, but in the end, it’s the user that personalizes how they search, and right now, it’s not  looking like any single search engine is going to control all of that.

    Which search engine do you think most consistently delivers the most relevant results? Are you turning to other ways to find information beyond search engines? Tell us what you use.

  • Bing Gears Up For The Kentucky Derby

    The Kentucky Derby is a huge deal for Louisville, Kentucky, with all sorts of people who would otherwise never visit flying in and spending lots of cash.  And the Derby’s at least a noteworthy event for Bing, too, with the folks behind Microsoft’s "decision engine" preparing some special instant answers.

    At the time of writing, Google and Yahoo aren’t offering anything similar, which could give Bing a nice edge.  Even if people don’t make a permanent change, they may switch search engines for a day knowing that they’ll get more relevant results.

    As for what, exactly, Bing’s doing to mark the Derby, a post on the Bing Search Blog explained this week, "If you are looking for the Kentucky Derby details Bing provides an instant answer that will give you the information to the event as well as some useful links to the race contenders, tickets, and fashion."

    The post also suggested, "Make sure to check back after the race for the instant answers with all the race results as well."

    It should be interesting to see if what’ve been described as the greatest two minutes in sports do Bing any good.

  • Bing to Appear on Women’s Basketball Jerseys

    Microsoft announced today that it has signed a multiyear marquee partnership with the Seattle Storm and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). A representative for Bing tells WebProNews that the following will represent the following opportunities for Bing:

    – Bing will be able to share its brand with a devoted and passionate fan base.

    – Bing will be the official decision engine of stormbasketball.com.

    –  Bing logo and name will appear on the front of the Storm’s home and visitor jerseys and shooting shirts, and in-arena signage.

    –  Storm will debut its new uniforms when the team hits the court for the season opener of its 11th season on Sunday, May 2.

    –  Bing is the third major marquee partner to the WNBA.

    Bing Appears on Seattle Storm Jerseys

    "The Seattle Storm is a major sports franchise in a major market, and we are thrilled to join with them and invest in our hometown," said Danielle Tiedt, general manager of Marketing for Bing at Microsoft. "Bing shares in the passion and dedication that the Storm organization has for the Seattle community and this partnership helps Bing reach the Storm’s dedicated fan base in a unique way."

    Bing is certainly not letting up on the marketing.

    Storm President and CEO says both the Storm and Bing are "leading organizations in our respective fields." I wonder what Google would have to say about that or 2009 WNBA Champions the Phoenix Mercury for that matter.

  • Bing’s New Twitter Results Won’t Include Promoted Tweets

    Update: A representative for Bing tells WebPronews the "Twitter monetization news will not result in sponsored results appearing in Bing results."

    Original Article: Microsoft announced today that Bing now pulls in tweets from Twitter in real-time, in a way that somewhat resembles Google’s real-time search feature.

    Twitter and Bing integration is not exactly new. Last summer, Bing began including tweets from certain people in some searches, though it was anything but real-time. Later in the fall, Bing announced a deal with Twitter giving Bing access to tweets. Bing set up Bing.com/twitter, where users could search Twitter in real-time from Bing, but it was not integrated to Bing’s regular search results.

    Now Bing has introduced its "social search" feature, which Bing’s Lawrence Kim describes:

    Bing now pulls in social content generated on Twitter to surface the most relevant updates within seconds of a breaking news event. From people on the ground tweeting about what’s happening around them to users sharing interesting news links while browsing at home, the Twitterati can be significantly faster than traditional media outlets in picking up information on breaking events. Further, the Twitterati also picks up information that the traditional media outlets often ignore – such as the latest viral video being shared online.

    At Bing, we analyze what topics are generating the most interest on Twitter to bring you the latest and most interesting content. So if you wanted to find out more information on the just-announced Kin phone from Microsoft, you’ll be able to discover it on Bing as the announcement was being made and journalists started tweeting about the product.

    Bing Social Search Results - with Twitter in Real-time

    There’s no word yet on whether or not Bing will integrate Twitter’s newly announced Promoted Tweets in its social search feature.

    Bing is however, also using Twitter data to show users the most popular shared links for navigational queries. If a user looks for the most popular celebrity news on TMZ, for example, they’ll see which links from TMZ people are sharing the most on Twitter.

    The new features are being tested with a small subset of Bing users and queries at this point, but the company says they will become widely available in the U.S. soon.

    By the way, here’s how Bing ranks tweets.

  • Bing, Yahoo Nibble At Google

    Bing, Yahoo Nibble At Google

    March was an interesting month for the search market, according to new statistics from comScore.  Not so interesting that Google isn’t still on top by a huge margin, of course, but interesting insofar as the search giant lost a bit of market share, even as Bing and Yahoo improved their standing.

    Let’s start with Google’s story.  In February, comScore puts its market share at 65.5 percent.  That declined to 65.1 percent in March, which is a moderately unusual turn of events.

    Bing logoAs for how Bing did, it’s still Microsoft’s little search-engine-that-could, achieving its tenth straight month of gains.  Not huge gains, perhaps – its market share just moved from 11.5 percent to 11.7 percent between February and March – but the streak remains impressive, and even the tiniest numbers add up over time.

    Then there’s Yahoo’s tale to consider.  Unfortunately for Carol Bartz, the company’s standing had dropped each of the previous 13 months.  However, moving from February to March, comScore recorded a 0.1 percent gain, nudging Yahoo from 16.8 percent to 16.9 percent.

    So it was definitely an interesting month, as these things go.  And Bing and Yahoo, at least, are no doubt hoping April turns out to be just as unusual.

  • Search for More Search Marketing Opportunities

    Since Bing launched last year, it has placed a great deal of emphasis on giving answers beyond just the "ten blue links." In reality, the major search engines each offer much more than these ten blue links  (the standard of the old days of search). Google, Yahoo, and Bing each offer a variety of ways for users to obtain the information they’re looking for through various search options, blended search results, and other products altogether.

    Being successful in search these days is much more complicated in some ways, yet much simpler in others. As Bing’s Stefan Weitz told WebProNews in a recent interview, "There’s way more opportunities now I think in search than there were even a couple years ago when folks were very focused on being the number 1 algo link on an organic search result…You just have to kind of think beyond the current model."

    One specific example Weitz was referring to, is Photosynth, a Bing Maps application, which lets businesses take pictures of every angle of their establishment, and let Bing put them together, so users can see all parts of the business that the business wants to be seen. As Weitz suggests, if you’re a restaurant, you can show customers your "tablecloths are clean" and your "silverware is polished."

    That’s just one of countless examples. Photosynth isn’t going to be a relevant tool for a lot of businesses, but for some, it may be great for helping to drive customers. The point is, search has changed dramatically, and continues to do so, pretty much on a daily basis.

    Mobile is changing the game a great deal itself, because it offers users so many ways to interact with different apps and businesses, opening up a whole slew of different ways to acquire information.

    "The mobile device is unique because it has so much context," says Wetiz. As he says, it’s the most personal computer users have. You’re home computer may be used by family and friends. Your work computer may be used by other workers, but your mobile device is pretty much yours, and that means targeting is easier. Throw location into the mix, and relevance gets easier to pinpoint.

    So while search marketing may be more complicated than just trying to rank these days, it is also simpler in some ways because you can just find the elements that are the most relevant to your business or to your strategy. The more resources you have, the more of these elements you may be able to conquer, but there are more opportunities to reach customers through their search habits than there have ever been before.

    Spend some time exploring the different ways you can reach customers through the search engines and their various offerings. Google has about 45 products listed on its product page. That’s not to say that all of these will be useful to you, but maybe it’s worth going down the list and asking yourself if there is a relevant strategy to employ. Yahoo has about 20 things listed on its search services page. Bing has the Behind Bing site, which shows off its various features.

  • Bing Launches Maps Apps for World Tour, Oodle, Foursquare

    Microsoft launched a few new apps for Bing Maps today: the World Tour App, the Oodle App and the Foursquare App.

    "Just about every month, Bing Maps gets a makeover in the form of new map imagery for locations worldwide," a representative for Bing tells WebProNews. "The World Tour map app brings these updates to life using the Bing Map Apps framework, Silverlight and Azure."

    Bing World Tour app launched today

    "Oodle.com, one of the fastest growing classifieds services is creating an app that will map rental housing on Bing Maps which will be available today," he says. "The Oodle Rentals app will pull-in Oodle data, allowing users to look at various rental housing available from Oodle.com."

    Bing Oodle app launched today

    "Last week at SES New York, we announced our partnership with foursquare and plans to roll out the foursquare Everywhere app on Bing Maps in the coming weeks," he notes. "Today, the app will be live and ready for use."

    Bing Foursquare app launched today

    That’s not all Microsoft announced for Bing at SES. They also announced an update to the Bing user interface, which adapts the page and search results based on the intent of the query.

    "We’ll be testing a new user interface that includes new design concepts that move the Quick Tabs functionality to the top of the screen, so customers see a more visual and organized page," the company said.

    They also announced a new search experience for autos. For more info on these updates, watch our coverage of Microsoft’s SES keynote and our exclusive interview with Bing Director Stefan Weitz.