Tag: Bing

Bing Launches Search Updates, Foursquare App for Maps

Microsoft announced some new updates to Bing today at SES NY, where WebProNews covered the event live (during which a representative for Bing also let me know that live.dev.webpronews.com would be a good place to check it out).

Will Bing’s updates affect your search strategy? Discuss here.

Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president, Online Audience Business, announced the updates during his keynote, which you can view here:

"The updates demonstrate Bing’s continued mission to connect people with the knowledge they want on the web," a Bing rep tells me.

So what are the updates?

There’s 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 rep explains. "On the left side of the page, there will be query-specific options to help refine users’ questions and help Bing better understand user intent. This rolling update begins today and will become available to approximately 5% of customers."

A new search experience for autos will also be rolled out (and available to everybody in the coming weeks). It pulls together disconnected content from across the web for what Bing calls a "one-stop-shop."

In addition, there is a new Foursquare map app for Bing Maps, where customers can see Foursquare check-ins, badges, and mayorships in Bing Maps.

When asked about how businesses can monetize the new opportunities presented by Bing, Mehdi said they can provide different kind of ads and find out more about user intent. "Signals of data have helped us understand user intent," Mehdi said.

The flighting of most of the updates begins today and will be rolling out to all customers later this spring and summer.

Check out our exclusive interview with Microsoft’s Stefan Weitz on the new Bing features:

What do you think of Bing’s new updates? Share your thoughts here.

March 25, 2010
Bing iPhone App Receives Big Update

The Bing app for the iPhone and iPod Touch should now offer users a much-improved experience. Microsoft’s released an updated version, and just about every aspect of the app was upgraded as part of this move.

Microsoft paid attention to the basics by implementing some stability fixes and adding support for the first-generation iPod Touch. A post on the Bing Search Blog explained that the company performed some "usability tweaks" and "design updates," as well.

Then it went far beyond the normal nip-and-tuck treatment by introducing a host of new features and options (many of which had been requested by users).

First up was the ability to bookmark content and later access it straight from the Bing homepage. The ability to copy and paste URLs was also added, and users can view and edit their search histories, or choose to make searches private from the start.

Search-related parental controls have been created, too, and travelers can alter their location settings in order to get results related to an area they’re either already in or planning to visit.

All of these changes should help make the Bing app a lot more popular (and over a million copies have been downloaded already). Maybe we’ll even see the rumors about Bing replacing Google as the default iPhone search engine resurface as a result.

March 22, 2010
Marketing Like Bing: The Farmville Example

There are many ways to market your business through Facebook. Some are obvious, and others not so much. One thing you can pretty much count on is that there are incredible masses of people on the social network that you can potentially reach, and in ways that will allow them not only to engage with your brand in a comfortable setting, but with other Facebook ecosystems they are already engaging with.

A perfect example of this was recently demonstrated by Microsoft in one of the company’s many marketing strategies for its "decision engine" Bing. I sat in on a Bing panel this week at SXSW, where some of Bing’s marketers talked about a variety of ways they have used social media to gain users. One of these ways was through none other than Farmville (if you’re a Facebook user, and don’t live under a rock, you’ve at least heard of it).

More people use Farmville than Twitter, according to Bing, and People are sharing all kinds of activities within Farmville itself. That’s why the company saw a great opportunity to experiment. What they did was offer a special offer inside of Farmville, that would give users free "farm cash" if they became a fan of Bing on Facebook, which would encourage continued user interaction with Bing. As a result:

– Over 72% of users who clicked on the engagement became fans
– 59,000 people published the story to their news feed
– Over 70,000 clicks were received on secondary feeds
– In 24hours, Bing had over 400,000 new fans to keep

Microsoft said its goals for engagement and social media efforts have been to:

– Add or create relevant value (stuff that’s not even necessarily a Microsoft property)

– Add depth to Bing’s personality

– Lead someone to a relevant engagement with Bing or each other.

– Yield passionate or emotional response from people

– Be intimate and/or scalable (can we be both)?

Bing’s Farmville experiment achieved all of these. However, the point of this is not that you should go out and immediately start a campaign through Farmville (although maybe it’s worth looking into if you think it’s a fit). The point is that there are more ways to harness a massive social network user-base (Facebook recently surpassed Google as the most-visited site in the U.S. for the week), according to Experian Hitwise). That’s a pretty impressive feat. Also consider that consumers favor brands who are on Facebook and Twitter, according to a recent study.

Really, it’s not even about Facebook or Twitter. It’s about getting out there wherever people are, and this is where they happen to be at the moment. That may change by this time next year, or the year after, but the principle will not. We’re at a point in history where it’s never been so easy for consumers and brands to engage with one another. Perhaps even better for brands, is that it has never been easier to reach customers in places they choose to entertain themselves, and I don’t mean just get in their faces, but actually reach them and get that engagement from them.

March 21, 2010
Critical: Improve Your Mobile Search and Advertising Strategy

A Google exec recently said, "In three years’ time, desktops will be irrelevant." That’s debatable, but there’s no question that mobile use will have grown much more than it already has. Based on comments in a recent keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer doesn’t seem to think PC use is going to drop too much, but he did say, "Mobile queries are just going to keep going up and up and up."

Do you think desktops will be irrelevant in 3 years? Share your thoughts here.

A study released last month found that the number of mobile phone subscribers is on track to increase from 4.6 billion to 5 billion globally by the end of 2010. Another study found that consumers are getting more comfortable with mobile shopping.

Mobile Search

Google has dominated the search market for a long time, and while this still continues to be the case, it’s important to note that search in general changes with mobile. People are searching in different ways than just using their favorite search engines. They’re using different apps. They’re using their voices. They’re scanning barcodes for instant access to product information. The number of ways people are finding information with their phones is only going to keep increasing. On mobile, it’s not just about Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

That’s not to say these three aren’t still incredibly important to mobile. In fact, the search share among these top search engines may even become more greatly divided as time goes on. We’re seeing different mobile carriers and manufacturers making deals with these companies, which affect the default search options for various devices. As we discussed before, mobile search engine use may be largely dictated by device popularity, which is (in my opinion) one of the biggest things Bing will have going in its favor in terms of market share – Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 phones will come with Bing hardware keys, meaning the most convenient way to search on these devices will likely be to hit a single button taking the user to Bing. If these devices become popular, it could be huge for Microsoft in search.

As far as Google indexing and mobile sites goes, Google’s Matt Cutts says, "If you can find a way where your existing site will work well in mobile browsers, we’re not worrying about supporting two completely different sites."

To learn about this subject in more detail, read the Google Webmaster Central Blog posts: Help Google Index Your Mobile Site, and Running Desktop and Mobile Versions of Your Site.

Mobile Search Advertising

When it comes to AdWords, Google says to create separate, mobile-focused campaigns so you can optimize keywords, ad text, and landing pages for people using mobile devices. Google shared an interesting case study this week looking at Razorfish’s mobile AdWords approach. They shared the following details:

– The Razorfish team started by duplicating the existing desktop campaigns and switching the settings to target mobile devices with full internet browsers.

– Since their client had a well-known brand name, they focused on branded keyword terms with enough traffic to help them learn quickly about what was working best for their campaigns.

– To measure performance, they tracked several conversion metrics including whether a mobile user looked up the brick and mortar store location or downloaded a coupon from the website. Right away, they saw a 7.5% lower cost per conversion on mobile devices, encouraging them to test ways to optimize their mobile campaigns.

– Razorfish tested whether variations in the campaign’s landing page would affect conversion rates. The team hypothesized that mobile users might be looking to take a specific action, and by starting the user’s experience closer to that action, the client would see better results. As it turned out, for this client, they saw much higher conversion rates when the user was directed to a landing page that showed nearby store locations.

– Finally, they tested variations in the ad text. Four versions of ad text were tested, including the original copy used in desktop campaigns. Each of the three new versions provided over 9.3% lift in conversion rate over the strongest performing copy in their desktop campaigns.

When it comes to Yahoo and Microsoft search advertising, things are about to get more appealing here in general, and presumably, that includes mobile. Microsoft and Yahoo advertisers will have the audiences of both search engines to view ads once Yahoo and Bing get their integration done.

Wrapping Up

One of the most important things any search marketer can do with regards to a mobile strategy, is to simply keep up with the latest mobile trends and innovations. This space is rapidly evolving, and new apps are released frequently. Pay attention to hot apps, and how your target audience is engaging with them. What devices, operating systems, and browsers are hot? Monitor studies and surveys that delve into demographics. Try to stay ahead of the curve.

Do you have a mobile search strategy? What suggestions do you have for improving in this area? Comment.

March 11, 2010
Motorola Goes Bing on Android-Based Devices

Motorola has announced a "global" alliance with Microsoft, which will see Bing used as the default search engine on Motorola Android-based devices. The move begins in China, where obviously there is some turmoil between Google and that country, but again, this is being called a "global" alliance that is "launching" in China.

Motorola says that users will get a pre-loaded Bing bookmark on their mobile browser, and an enhanced search widget with Bing integration, though users will be able to customize their devices and select their own search provider.

"We believe that consumer choice is one of the most critical components to ensuring a rich and seamless client experience," said Christy Wyatt, corporate vice president of software and services, Motorola Mobile Devices. "Motorola and Microsoft have enjoyed a longstanding collaboration and the addition of Bing services to our Android-based smartphones in China is another important step in empowering our end-users."

"Mobile devices continue to be a critical place for customers to access location-based services such as local search and mapping," said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of the Online Services Division at Microsoft. "We are pleased to expand our long-standing relationship with Motorola to bring powerful Bing location-based services to Motorola’s innovative new mobile devices, providing consumers with more choice and flexibility in mobile search."

This is the second time in about a week Motorola has made news by offering non-Google search options on its Android-based devices. The recently launched Motorola Backflip comes with Yahoo.

Bing search and maps will be available on Motorola Android-based devices in Q1 2010 in China. No other expansion of this has been announced, but the phrase "global alliance" certainly leaves room for speculation.

March 11, 2010
Google, Bing Make Small Gains

February was a quiet month for the search market; we’re not going to suggest any companies either break out the champagne or fire their CEOs as a result of the small changes that took place. Still, for those who are curious, comScore believes it was Google and Bing that came out looking like winners.

Google managed to increase its share of the U.S. search market to 65.5 percent, up from 65.4 percent in January, according to comScore’s data. Bing, meanwhile, accomplished a more impressive feat (in overall terms, and especially in relation to its size) by grabbing 0.2 percent of market share.

That put Bing in control of 11.5 percent of the market, up from 11.3 percent the month before.

Yahoo’s share of the search market then decreased, heading from 17.0 percent to 16.8 percent. Which is embarrassing, but not yet catastrophic, as the company’s partnership with Microsoft moves towards completion.

The interesting thing will be if Bing and Yahoo keep trading share. Also, of course, if Google keeps increasing its dominance. We’ll be sure to cover comScore’s next report to see if any trends have emerged.

March 10, 2010
Google Suffers Market Share Stumble In The UK

While we normally don’t comment on market share fluctuations that occur in places other than America, some recent changes in the UK may bear mentioning. According to the AT Internet Institute, Google’s share of the search market slipped by 1.6 percent between January and February.

That’s a significant amount. Indeed, as the slightly upsized figure below shows (sorry for any blurriness), if Ask and AOL had suffered similar losses, they’d have been wiped out, hitting zero.

Of course, that didn’t happen. Instead, both Yahoo and Bing benefited from Google’s dip. Yahoo gained a not-bad 0.6 percent, and Bing increased its share by an even-better 0.7 percent.

Google’s still in an extremely dominant position, but given that Microsoft’s about to spend $2 billion on Bing commercials in the UK, these changes are noteworthy. Microsoft might not be throwing its money away, as some people have speculated; there’s now the possibility that it could extend or accelerate this growth trend.

We’ll be sure to write again about the UK search market next month if anything out of the ordinary happens. In the meantime, it should be interesting to see how those Bing commercials are received.

March 9, 2010
Talking Bing/Yahoo Integration with Yahoo Search

As you know, Microsoft and Yahoo were recently granted regulatory approval on their search and advertising deal, and we’ve discussed what this might mean for search engine optimization. WebProNews stopped by the Yahoo Headquarters in Sunnyvale before heading to SMX West in Santa Clara this week, and talked with Shashi Seth, Sr. VP of Yahoo Search Products about the deal, how it will be integrated, and timing, among other things.

Seth says that the integration of Bing results into Yahoo Search will take somewhere in the range of 18 to 24 months for it to happen worldwide, and they’ll start with the U.S. first. He says the core thing users will find is a compelling set of experiences that go on top of just the algorithmic and paid results that come from Microsoft. In other words, Yahoo users will still find the Yahoo experience.

Shashi says he feels like Yahoo can surface a lot of things better on its own, simply because of the content its properties provides (local, sports, finance, etc.). That stuff won’t be going away, and it will be weaved into the experience.

One thing that Shashi stressed was that the integration of Bing frees up a lot of Yahoo’s own resources, so they can improve on other aspects of the user experience. Comments from Yahoo’s Director of Search Marketing David Roth at the State of the Search Union keynote suggested that some amount of those resources will be moved over to work with Microsoft as well, with others staying at Yahoo:

WebProNews actually spoke with Roth himself after the event as well. He thinks he has something of a unique viewpoint about the integration, as he comes from search marketing himself. He will also likely be one of the first to be able to use the integration, given his position within the company. You can hear more of what he has to say in this interview:

Reactions from marketers are still mixed about how this integration is going to play out. This point was made clear in the keynote. Misty Locke of iProspect said a lot of her clients are excited about it, while former Googler Vanessa Fox is reserving judgment, hoping Yahoo doesn’t lose "all the Yahooness." From the way Yahoo has described the coming integration, particularly Shahi Seth, it doesn’t sound like it will be losing much Yahooness at all, but the extent of integration of things like Yahoo’s BOSS and SearchMonkey features is still largely unknown.

March 7, 2010
Bing Maps Gets Biggest Imagery Update to Date

Microsoft is rolling out the largest imagery update to Bing Maps to date, adding 6.7 million square kilometers of new imagery, a representative for Bing tells WebProNews.

The update includes new aerial imagery for the Russian Federation, Australia, Mexico and most places in the US where there is existing black and white imagery. "There is also a notable addition of Bird’s Eye Imagery for Sweden," the rep says.

Here’s a list as mentioned on the Bing Maps Blog:

Aerial

Australia    524,645 sq. km.
Botswana    61,433 sq. km.
Estonia    618 sq. km.
Hungary    3,369 sq. km.
Mexico    236,624 sq. km.
Morocco    13,303 sq. km.
Namibia    72,162 sq. km.
New Zealand    14,987 sq. km.
Poland    6,254 sq. km.
Romania    3,695 sq. km.
Russian Federation    553,244 sq. km.
South Africa    123,138 sq. km.
Turkey    16,148 sq. km.
United Kingdom    15,221 sq. km.
United States    4,961,758 sq. km.

Oblique (Bird’s Eye)

Austria    238 sq. km.
Belgium    898 sq. km.
Denmark    718 sq. km.
Finland    1,634 sq. km.
France    2,001 sq. km.
Greece    931 sq. km.
Ireland    1,340 sq. km.
Netherlands    1,709 sq. km.
Norway    2,425 sq. km.
Portugal    2,184 sq. km.
Romania    1,534 sq. km.
Spain    5,143 sq. km.
Sweden    6,747 sq. km.
Switzerland    424 sq. km.
United Kingdom    13,094 sq. km.
United States    56,007 sq. km.

Last month Bing had pushed out its biggest imagery update to that point, but as Chris Pendleton says on the blog, this one blows that record out of the water.

Visuals can be seen via the

Bing Maps World Tour.

March 5, 2010
How Much Is Mobile Going to Change the Search Market?

More people have the web in the palm of their hands than ever before. Smartphone usage isn’t exactly slowing down, and for that reason, the search market might get shaken up considerably in the coming months. Google has long dominated the search market, and to this day continues to do so. There is nothing indicating that will change in the near future, but the rise of smartphones and deals among different players could conceivably shake things up, and make things a bit more competitive.

AT&T has just confirmed that a new Android device it is about to begin offering (The Motorola Backflip, launching March 7), will come with Yahoo as its default search engine, as opposed to Google. This is interesting of course, because Android is Google’s mobile operating system. How many more deals like this will we see?

Microsoft will eventually launch its new Windows phones, which will come with a Bing hardware key. Owners of these phones will automatically use Bing as their search engine when they hit the search button, which will be the most convenient way of searching from the devices.

When you look at things like this, it almost seems as though popularity of specific mobile devices may dictate to some extent, search engine usage. Right now, Google powers the uber-popular iPhone’s search, but that could change in time. It appears that mobile carriers and manufacturers are playing an increasingly significant role in search usage (probably a good reason that Microsoft is said to be investing a billion in mobile).

PC hardware traditionally hasn’t made search a focal point, and therefore hasn’t had a huge influence on what search engine a person uses. How much will PC use shift to smartphone use though? It’s not likely to completely replace it anytime soon (as MIcrosoft CEO Steve Ballmer implied in his keynote at SMX West yesterday), but I know personally, I’ve spent less time on my PC since I got my current phone, and much of the activity I use that phone for requires search (the most convenient method being the hardware search button).

Then you have apps. New apps come out everyday, and you never know what’s going to be popular tomorrow. There are already apps out there changing how people find local businesses, for example. More apps mean more choices for the consumer, and that could mean an even greater scattering of search market share.

It seems to me that mobile is the best thing search competition has going for it. For Google to defend its title, staying relevant in the mobile space is going to be key moving forward. Fortunately for them, they’re doing a pretty good job so far. Last I saw, Android usage was on the rise (though deals like AT&T and Yahoo’s seem to blur the lines a bit).

How big of an impact do you think the mobile industry will have on the search market? Share your thoughts here.

March 3, 2010
Bing Talks Local Business Listings

In case you missed it, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke at SMX West in Santa Clara yesterday, addressing the search marketing industry for the first time (you can watch that at our new site live.dev.webpronews.com). Obviously, much of the conversation was centered around Bing. A little bit later in the day, WebProNews caught up with Mikko Ollila, Senior Product Manager on Bing Local to talk a little bit about Bing’s efforts in local search.

As Ballmer noted in his keynote, Google "did search right first," and Ollila mentioned Google as well, but he says Bing’s local experience is more natural (almost like being there). He says it’s designed to help users make quick decisions, in as little as three clicks.

Ollila says that Bing gathers business info from different providers, making it difficult for Bing to ensure accuracy of unclaimed listings, although he maintains they do a pretty good job of it. The best thing business owners can do, he says, is to find the Bing Local Listing Center, and go and take a hold of their own listing. "Just take ownership and make sure all your information is represented correctly," he says.

He says it’s probably already there and correct, but if you own a business and want more traffic, you should make sure and get ownership of the listing. Bing tries to make it as easy as possible, giving the user a "wizard" type of interface.

Ollila mentions that a lot of business owners get fired up about local listings, and upset about bad reviews. Bing crawls the web for reviews and plugs them in to business listings. He says businesses will often get mad at not just the reviewers, but at Bing for listing these reviews. He says, "There’s no real magic answer for getting bad reviews other than take care of your customer."

As you know, maps and local go hand in hand, and as we covered last month, Microsoft introduced some new Bing Maps features at TED, including a streetside photos application, world wide telescope integration, indoor panoramas, and video overlay technology.

Microsoft wants to gain any ground in can in search, and the company is showing that this time around (with Bing, I mean) they are taking it very seriously. Still the very dominant Google isn’t exactly slowing down in its own efforts. As Ballmer pointed out in his keynote, since Bing launched, efforts from the competition seem to have increased right along with the companies own efforts. Right around the same time Microsoft unveiled these features, Google introduced its Google Maps Labs, which hosts experimental features for Google Maps that users can turn on/off.

Features give customers reasons to use products, which is why it is important for businesses to at least acknowledge the efforts being put forth by the major search players in this area. Even if a specific map-related feature doesn’t affect your business directly, it may give a potential customer reason to simply start using local search with a particular provider, which makes it all the more important for a business to make sure it’s properly represented in the listings with said provider.

Do you use Bing Local? How would you rate Bing’s local experience compared to Google’s? Comment here.

March 3, 2010
Bing Suggests Queries Based on Search History

Microsoft announced today that Bing is just now supporting query history in its Autosuggest feature. In other words, if you have your search history enabled, Bing will incorporate past queries you’ve made into the suggestions.

"You are in full control of your query history," the Bing Team stresses. "We know your privacy is very important to you. You can turn History on or off at any time or selectively remove any portion of your search history using the Manage History option. You will see both of these choices every time you use Autosuggest."

"Many search tasks span multiple search sessions even days or weeks," Bing says. "In fact, 44% of non-navigational search sessions last longer than 1 week! Perhaps you need to research the purchase of a new automobile. You might use Bing to find a retail location and to further research online – over many days – to make the best decisions on your big ticket purchase. With history support in Autosuggest, you can restart a previous search session by typing a few characters to see your previous queries and start researching right where you left off. We know from our testing that this makes you more effective at your longer search tasks."

The suggestions that are based on your search history are listed in purple, to stand out from the other blue suggestions.

March 1, 2010
Will Bing Powering Yahoo Make SEO Easier?

There is an interesting discussion going on in our WebProWorld forum about search engine optimization post Microsoft-Yahoo deal. For those unfamiliar with the topic, Microsoft and Yahoo recently gained regulatory approval on a search and advertising deal announced last year, which will see Yahoo using Bing’s algorithm in its search results. The discussion is about whether or not this means businesses and webmasters will only have to worry about optimizing for 2 search engines (Google/Bing) rather than 3 (Google, Yahoo, and Bing).

Will you focus your efforts more heavily on Bing? Discuss.

What Bing Coming to Yahoo Means

It’s important to note that Microsoft and Yahoo still have plenty of details to work out before anyone knows just how the product of this deal will function. We know that Bing will be used in the back-end of searches on Yahoo, but we don’t know what other elements Yahoo will still be incorporating into the search experience. For example, Yahoo said last week that the companies will still be discussing how SearchMonkey and BOSS figure into the mix.

Optimizing for Yahoo is not going to be limited to showing up in Bing’s results. That’s not to say that showing up in Bing’s results won’t have its advantages for Yahoo search, but there is a lot more going on at Yahoo than that. The company has been stressing that it is still very much focused on search, and under the deal with Microsoft, Yahoo will still be controlling the user experience at Yahoo.com.

Right now, Yahoo.com has plenty of elements to consider, from news and trending topics, to a whole slew of "applications" that users can customize on their Yahoo homepage. Among these are Facebook and Flickr. If you want to get in front of Yahoo users, it’s not limited to Yahoo search results. That said, Yahoo search results also have their own thing going on. Keep an eye on the box that appears under the search box after you enter a query. It contains related queries, and "related concepts". This is one area that could conceivably be independent from Bing (although that remains to be seen at this point). Yahoo is not shy about putting brands in these "related concepts" either. You can find WebProNews in there for a query like "ebusiness news".

The point is, Yahoo has made it clear that it will continue to control the user experience, and that means there should be plenty of areas within Yahoo that are out of Bing’s control. This leads me to presume that Yahoo will not be something you’ll want to ignore, just because Bing is integrated into it. Remember that at this point, Yahoo controls a much greater percentage of the search market than Bing.

All of that said, you may want to pay closer attention to your Bing rankings if you haven’t done so in the past, because while Yahoo will still be Yahoo to its users, the deal also means there will be significantly more eyeballs on what Bing determines to be the most relevant results to searches.

Why Stop at Google, Yahoo, and Bing?

These may be the biggest three search engines in terms of market share in the United States, but there are still plenty of people using others. For one thing, YouTube is number 2. Not Yahoo or Bing. If you are concerned about simply being found where people are searching, you should have a YouTube presence. That of course means having a video strategy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have a huge video budget.

There are still people using Ask as well. In search industry coverage, it often gets overshadowed by the others, but there are still a lot of people using it. In fact, the Ask Network’s market share grew by 6% from December to January. Ask.com’s market share grew by 1%. A lot of people search with AOL. AOL’s search is powered by Google, but it doesn’t always return the same results as Google.

Facebook’s search market share grew by 13% in that same period of time. You may not think about Facebook for search as much, but people are spending more and more time on Facebook, and it stands to reason that they’ll be conducting more and more searches from Facebook. Granted, Facebook’s web search feature is powered by Bing, but that’s only a piece of the Facebook Search puzzle. If you don’t have a Facebook strategy, you may be missing out on a lot more searches. By the way, did you know that Facebook recently passed Yahoo as the 2nd most visited site (just under Google)?

These are just a few examples. People are searching from a lot more places. Rather than just optimizing for Google, Yahoo, and Bing, perhaps you should think about all of the places where your site/business would make sense when a user searches (consider niche sites as well).

Does the Yahoo/Bing deal make optimization easier? Weigh in with your thoughts.

February 28, 2010
Google Trounces Yahoo, Bing In Mobile Search Report

Although Google’s undoubtedly best known for dominating the traditional search market, the company’s no slouch when it comes to mobile. New stats from Opera indicate that Google has a huge lead over its closest rival, and that its other well-funded competitor barely enters the equation.

According to the latest Opera State of the Mobile Report, Google’s search portal accounts "for more than 9% of all page views on the mobile Web." Obviously, that’s impressive.

Moving on, things take a turn for the ho-hum. Yahoo can only claim 4.3 percent of page views, which isn’t bad, just kind of embarrassing next to Google’s twice-as-large share.

Finally, we arrive at something shameful. To quantify Bing’s share, Opera had to consider an extra place to the right of the decimal point. The final number: 0.03 percent, which is one three-hundredth of Google’s share.

Google hasn’t quite taken over the world, however. Jon von Tetzchner, Opera’s cofounder, said in a statement, "While Google performs well globally, we also see several local search engines, such as Yandex in Russia and Ukraine, and Baidu in China, have impressive results in their key markets."

February 25, 2010
Yahoo Gets Deep With Twitter

Yahoo said early Wednesday it has entered into a partnership with Twitter that will integrate real-time tweets across the Yahoo network.

Users will be able to access their personal Twitter feeds on the Yahoo homepage, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Sports, and other areas. Yahoo users will also be able to update their Twitter status from Yahoo and share content in their Twitter feed.

"The information in one single tweet can travel light-years farther with this Yahoo! integration," said Twitter cofounder, Biz Stone. "Tweets in more places brings relevance where and when you need it most."

While Twitter seemingly wants to be everywhere on the Web as it has search deals with Microsoft’s Bing and Google, Yahoo is trying to dive deeper into the social realm and become the go-to property for all things social.

Yahoo reached a similar deal with Facebook in December that is expected to roll out in the first half of this year. Users will be able to connect with Facebook friends on Yahoo, view a feed of their friends’ activity, and share content such as photos from Flickr or comment on news stories.

The move by Yahoo is also part of its Open Strategy which Jim Stoneham, vice president of Communities for Yahoo said is "aimed at making experiences dramatically more open and personally relevant for the more than 600 million people that visit Yahoo each month."

"Let me try to capture the enormity of this integration in 140 characters or less: We’re turning the key to the online social universe – you will find the most personally relevant experiences through Yahoo!," said Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president, consumer products group, Yahoo!.

"We’re also simplifying people’s lives by bringing their social worlds – and the world — together for easy access."

Who do you think will see the most benefit from this partnership? Yahoo or Twitter?

February 24, 2010
Will Windows Phone 7 Help Bing Market Share?

Microsoft has unveiled its Windows Phone 7 Series, a new mobile platform. The phones will bring Microsoft’s XBox Live service and its Zune music and video experience together on phones. Perhaps more interesting, at least to enthusiasts of the search industry, is that Windows Phone 7 devices will come with "a dedicated hardware button for Bing."

Microsoft says this will provide one-click access to search from anywhere on the phone. A special implementation of Bing search also provides intent-specific results, depending on the type of query, the company says.

"Today, I’m proud to introduce Windows Phone 7 Series, the next generation of Windows Phones," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said at Mobile World Congress today. "In a crowded market filled with phones that look the same and do the same things, I challenged the team to deliver a different kind of mobile experience. Windows Phone 7 Series marks a turning point toward phones that truly reflect the speed of people’s lives and their need to connect to other people and all kinds of seamless experiences."

Of course Windows Phone 7 devices won’t be the first to incorporate one-click search hardware buttons. There are already Android devices that have buttons, which will take you to Google search. Android’s popularity is growing though, and that can only help Google’ search market share. With Microsoft’s Bing button, the company could get a significant boost to an already growing market share itself. That of course depends on how popular Windows Phone 7 devices become. Regardless, it’s a smart move by Microsoft, and shows that they are going to continue the aggressive push of their search engine they’ve spent so much money promoting. Google’s relationship with Apple as the search provider for the iPhone has recently come into question, although Google maintains that the relationship is stable.

Microsoft partners have already begun building the phones that will feature Windows Phone 7 Series. The devices will be ready for the 2010 holiday season. So far, partners include mobile operators AT&T, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone, and manufacturers Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC Corp., HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm Inc.

The real question is whether or not these new Windows phones be able to compete with other established smartphone OS brands like iPhone and Android devices.

February 20, 2010
Why Bing May Be on the Road to Incredible Growth

Microsoft has spent a lot of money promoting Bing since its launch, and Bing’s usage has grown by millions of people since then, but it still has a long way to go to reach the top of the search market share mountain. Google is still sitting comfortably atop that mountain of course, but Google doesn’t really have to lose for Bing to win. Microsoft has been putting things in motion that have the potential to increase Bing usage by an enormous amount.

Let’s Start with the Yahoo Deal

The search and advertising deal between Yahoo and Microsoft has now received its approval from the Department of Justice and other regulators, and appears poised to go into effect by the end of the year, at least in the U.S. The announcement says:

"The companies will begin the transition of algorithmic search and have set a goal of completing that effort in at least the United States by the end of 2010. The companies also hope to make significant progress transitioning U.S. advertisers and publishers prior to the 2010 holiday season, but may wait until 2011 if they determine that the transition will be more effective after the holiday season. All global customers and partners are expected to be transitioned by early 2012."

Search ad inventory from both Microsoft and Yahoo (and their respective partners) will be combined into a unified search marketplace, as the companies put it, giving advertisers access to their combined audience of nearly 577 million searchers worldwide.

Then There’s That Other Deal

Compete made some data available this week, showing that Facebook surpassed Yahoo in the U.S. as the second largest site in terms of unique monthly visitors, just behind Google. Earlier this month, Microsoft and Facebook "enhanced" their partnership, which will give Facebook users a "more complete search experience" as Microsoft puts it. Bing will continue to be the exclusive search provider for Facebook’s web search results.

"This change will also enable Microsoft to continue its focus on driving strong performing campaigns across our own social media and communications tools, including Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail, and via rich content environments across MSN and Xbox Live," noted Bing General Manager Jon Tinter.

According to data released by Nielsen this week, the average Facebook user spends about seven hours a month on the site. Now only a fraction of that is probably using the site’s web search feature (or Bing feature, if you will). However, Facebook continues to find ways to get people staying on Faceboook for more of their online time. With Bing right within, this is likely going to be an increasingly important segment of Bing usage. Accentuating this point, comScore’s latest numbers have Facebook’s own search market share increasing by 13% from December to January.

Mobile May Also Play a Vital Role

This week, Microsoft unveiled its upcoming Windows Phone 7 series. This is a series of mobile devices, which Microsoft already has a slew of partners lined up for that will not only come with Windows software, but with a Bing search hardware key. If these phones become popular Microsoft is pretty much guaranteed a significant boost in Bing usage. They should be out for the holidays.

Lately rumors have been swirling about Apple and Microsoft being in talks to offer Bing as the default search engine on the iPhone as well, and if that were to happen, that would also obviously be huge. Google said recently that it has no reason to believe its relationship with Apple is going to change, and that it doesn’t comment on rumors, but they think the "relationship is stable." Meanwhile, competition seems to be heating up between those two with each passing day, and Apple going to Bing isn’t exactly seeming less likely.

It’s Already Growing

Bing’s share of the search market is already growing. From Decemeber to January, the number of U.S. searches on Bing grew by 5%, according to Experian Hitwise. Google’s share shrank by 1% and Yahoo’s by 2%. Of course Microsoft continues to roll out new features for Bing, and will continue to do so along the way. It’s hard to speculate what all that might entail, but Microsoft is clearly hellbent on getting more people to search with Bing. Even if Bing is never able to surpass the far more dominant Google in search market share, Bing is on pace to get a lot more people using it.

February 20, 2010
Google Shows How it “Gets Inside” the Olympic Games

Update: Google has posted its entire press conference from British Columbia so anybody can see it. In it, Google shows off the different ways it is involved in the Olympics experience:

If you don’t want to watch the entire thing, but would rather see the gist of it, they have also uploaded the highlights:

Original Article: As the Olympics get underway, fans have a lot of options to engage online. Many popular sites on the web are involved in a variety of ways.

Google

Google allows you to take a virtual tour of the Olympics in 3D. They recently released updates in Google Earth’s 3D Buildings layer, which showcase Olympic venues (54 buildings). Models range from downtown event centers to ski lifts and spectator bleachers. The Official site for the Olympics uses the models itself.

Vectoral Elevation has "an interactive artwork" that allows users to direct light beams and transform Vancouver’s skyline until the end of the month using a custom interface built on Google Earth and Map APIs. It lets users design big light sculptures by directing 20 robotic searchlights located around English Bay.

Google has also taken Street View to Olympics country:

Bing

Microsoft launched a new Bing Maps application that pulls photos from Flickr, associates them with Bing Maps Streetside photos, and overlays them stretching the photo to form fit where in the world it belongs. The app is currently available in Vancouver (among several other places).

Bing actually has a Winter Olympics-specific Maps app as well. "In coordination with NBCOlympics.com, get up to the minute information about the 2010 Winter Olympics in everything from venues to news," says Bing’s Chris Pendleton. "Click the Venues bar on the left to see the different venues where the events are taking place. Click the Medal Count bar to see every country mapped out with the number of bronze, silver and gold medals awarded to the respective country. Click the Winter Games News and Blogs to get the latest information about the Winter Olympic Games from news sources and bloggers on site. Finally, check out the Winter Games Tweets which filters information from our Twitter Maps application specific to the Olympics." Bing talks about more Vancouver apps that feature Bing Maps here.

Bing is also giving its home page some Olympics love. It will be updating it with various photos from the events. "And while we’ll show some winners, this won’t be the standard parade of medalists," says Bing’s Stephanie Horstmanshof. "We’re out to show the great moments from the games: the alpine skier from Ghana, the debut of Ski Cross as an Olympic event, anything to do with curling—all with the stunning imagery that you’ve come to expect on the Bing homepage."

More ways that Bing and MSN are involved in the Olympics are discussed here.

Yahoo/Flickr

Yahoo has a games-dedicated site, as well as a new Olympic mobile site at m.yahoo.com/olympics. This will provide coverage with live results, upcoming events, medal counts, photos, news, commentary, etc.

Yahoo also has a Yahoo Sports Olympics Coverage app for My Yahoo, that gives you more such information.

On Yahoo’s Flickr, the IOC, the official governing body of the Olympics, has set up their official Olympic photo group for people to share their photos of the events and of Vancouver.

Facebook

The IOC also has an official Olympic Games Page on Facebook. "Through the page, you can stay updated on activities and events at the Games, while sharing your own stories about what the Olympics mean to you," says Alex Huot, head of social media for the IOC. "You’ll even be able to stay updated on future games even after this year’s Winter Olympics end."

Alex also encourages people to use Facebook to become a fan of athletes and Olympics teams, play the Vancouver 2010 Official Minigame, and share photos.

Twitter

Twitter has a list of verified athletes from the Olympics who will be tweeting. Fans will of course be tweeting non-stop about things that happen at the Olympics throughout the events.

These are just a few of many ways fans of the Olympics can engage with the events on the web. How are you planning on staying connected?

February 17, 2010
Google Views Apple Relationship As Valuable

Google said today it views its relationship with Apple as valuable and does not see any reason for that to change, even with the rumors Microsoft’s Bing may replace Google search on the iPhone.

"Apple is a very close and valuable partner and we’re very excited about the relationship we have with them today. We have no reason to believe that’s going to change," said Vic Gundortra, Vice President, Engineering, Google, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

"We don’t want to comment on those rumors," he told Reuters when pressed on the issue of the iPhone at a roundtable. "We think that relationship is stable."

When asked about the Nexus Two, a second Google-branded phone targeted at business users the company is expected to introduce, Gundotra said no decisions had been finalized about how many Google phones there would be or who would make them.

Google and HTC released the co-branded Nexus One last month, the first time Google has used its name for a consumer hardware product.

"We just haven’t made those decisions yet," Gundotra said when asked if HTC would also make the Nexus Two. "We decided to take the flagship phones, the best phones that were available, and those would have Google branding."

February 15, 2010
Nielsen Grants Bing Small Win Against Google

We heard earlier this week from comScore and Hitwise, and today, still more evidence that Bing performed well in January arrived. Nielsen has released its monthly report regarding the U.S. search market, and according to the firm, Bing managed to increase its market share by exactly 1.0 percent.

In December, Bing’s market share was a slightly embarrassing 9.9 percent. But Nielsen indicated this afternoon that it’s cracked the 10.0 mark, landing at 10.9 percent in January. Which isn’t a bad achievement for a single month.

What makes Bing’s accomplishment much more impressive is that Microsoft seems to have drawn searchers away from Google, too. On a month-to-month basis, Google’s market share decreased from 67.3 percent to 66.3 percent, according to Nielsen.

Meanwhile, Yahoo gained just the tiniest bit of ground, inching up from a share of 14.4 percent to 14.5 percent.

As always, it’ll be interesting to see if these changes are the start of any sort of trend, or just one-time adjustments. A big factor in how things play out this month will probably be how the search engines handle scores, medal counts, and athlete profiles relating to the Olympics.

February 13, 2010
Bing, Google, and Yahoo All Making Maps More Interesting
At TED, Microsoft unveiled some new features for Bing Maps. "This work builds on the idea of spatial search that Microsoft discussed in December when the company launched its new version of Bing Maps," a representative for Microsoft tells WebProNews.

Some of the new features are available today, but some you will have to wait on a little bit. Microsoft highlights the following new features:
Meanwhile, Google has introduced Google Maps Labs, similar to Gmail labs, only for maps. Right now there are only 9 features, which you can enable/disable at anytime, but that list is sure to increase greatly over time. Current features include:

– Drag ‘n’ Zoom
– Aerial imagery
– Back to Beta
– Where in the World game
– Rotatable Maps
– What’s Around here?
– LatLng Tooltip
– LatLng Marker
– Smart Zoom

Click the little green flask icon at the top of Google Maps to access these, and see more details about what each one does.

Google is also just finished pushing out an imagery update for Google Earth and Google Maps. More on that here.

As long as we’re talking about Bing and Google, let’s not leave Yahoo out. This week at their SearchSpeak event, they unveiled a mobile app that’s not available yet, but has attracted a fair amount of Buzz. It’s called Sketch-a-Search, and lets users trace areas on maps with their fingers to search for things in that area.

Which search engine has the Maps features you are most interested in? Let us know.
February 12, 2010