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Tag: Bing

  • Bing Shopping Campaigns Now Available To All In The U.S.

    Earlier this year, Microsoft introduced Bing Shopping Campaigns in beta aimed at making it easier for businesses to advertise products from their Bing Merchant Center stores. On Tuesday, the company announced that they’re now available to all U.S. customers.

    In fact, they’ll soon be the default campaign type for running product ads on Bing. They’ll sunset the traditional way of managing product ads in the fall.

    “Bing Shopping Campaigns (BSC) beta was launched in April to participating advertisers. Advertisers tested BSC for capabilities that allowed them to organize, track, and manage their Product Ads in a more efficient and optimal manner,” says Bing’s Neha Mohan.

    “Bing Shopping Campaigns is a new campaign type in your UI that makes it easier than ever to advertise your products from the Bing Merchant Center store,” Mohan adds. “It is the latest and greatest way to create and manage Product Ads, streamlining the traditional process so you can get your ads up and running in no time.”

    In addition to the increased availability, there are some new features for Bing Shopping Campaigns. Bing provides a feature rundown, which includes a comparison to Google’s offering:

    bsctable

    You can find an overview here as well as set up guidance and optimization tips from the company.

    Images via Bing

  • Bing Ads Gets Better Demographic Targeting

    Microsoft announced new global increased age and gender coverage for improved demographic targeting in Bing Ads. It utilizes data from users’ search and display behavior.

    According to the company, the coverage of targetable users has actually more than double as a result of its new efforts. This means an opportunity for more click-throughs and conversions for targetable users and potentially increased ROI for campaigns.

    “To take advantage of Improved Demographic Targeting, simply set up targeting rules under ‘Advanced targeting options’ to determine when, to whom, and on what devices you want to show your ad,” explains Microsoft’s Kevin Salat. “You can further adjust your bid for each age range and gender, which will enable your ad groups to automatically increase their keywords bids when specific genders or certain age groups are searching. This way, you can greatly improve the chance of your ads showing to the demographic groups you want.”

    demo

    “Increased global coverage for the age and gender demographic can both refine and improve your targeting strategy, but don’t forget there are plenty of other methods and strategies you can use to get your message across to customers,” says Salat. “Whether you’re using an exclusive targeting strategy or incremental bidding to reach customers, you can also target by location, device and operating system, day of the week, and time of day.”

    Earlier this week, Bing announced the addition of customized modules and period-over-period comparison features to the Bing Ads homepage.

    image via Bing

  • Bing Ads Home Page Gains Highly Requested Features

    Microsoft had added customized modules and period-over-period comparison features to the Bing Ads homepage. According to the company, these have been the two most requested features since a recent Bing Ads revamp.

    The new features are designed to make it easier to do more in less time when it comes to monitoring accounts and finding ways to improve performance.

    “You can define your own modules to customize your performance data by applying filters, making campaign maintenance faster and easier,” explains Microsoft’s Bella Jin. “And now when you create and save a filter in the Campaigns page, it will appear as an optional new module in the Home Page. Use these custom modules to get a more detailed snapshot of your account performance and the metrics that matter to you most.”

    Custom modules can be created by creating and saving a filter in the Campaigns page and adding the module to the Home Page by checking Show.

    “Many of you are frequent users of the period-over-period comparison functionality in Bing Ads’ Campaign Page and Reports suite, which compares your ad’s performance between two periods of time,” says Jin in a blog post. “Now, the Bing Ads Home Page also offers period-over-period comparisons so that you can view performance over time for your account’s top performing KPIs and identify trends.”

    More on this and other tracking features can be found in the help center here.

  • Facebook Embraces Bing As App Links Partner

    Facebook announced App Links at its F8 conference last year. It’s an open protocol that enables developers to make deep app content linkable from other apps and services. One app can link to a piece of content from another app, and if the user has both apps installed on their device, that second app will open the content.

    App Links is essentially an attempt to make the mobile app ecosystem more like the web in that it’s built on content linking to other content, as opposed to a vast array of walled gardens.

    Facebook says it has so far seen over 1,000 developers create more than 7 billion App Links-enabled URLs.

    In May, Bing talked about some ways it’s working to better surface mobile apps. This includes App Links. In fact, it launched a new App Links markup tester tool in Bing Webmaster Tools, which extracts App Links data from pages and performs a validation process.

    A new post on the Facebook Developers blog talks about how the company is “growing the App Links community with Bing.”

    “Microsoft recently announced the Bing search engine will support App Links,” Facebook’s Nancy Xiao tells developers. “Bing is expanding its search index to include apps and app actions so content from App Links enabled apps can appear in mobile Bing search results. This can help drive more installs, engagement, and re-engagement for your app.”

    “Bing has embraced App Links as one of the open standards for app publishers to participate in our index of Apps and App actions – which allows our searchers to naturally discover and re-engage with their apps directly from Bing and Bing-powered search,” adds Vincent Wehren, Senior Product Lead for Bing.

    Screen shot 2015-07-02 at 10.13.57 AM

    Facebook says it will continue investing in the App Links ecosystem and add support to more of its products and services, noting that it has already done so in ads. It’s unclear exactly what products and services Facebook is referring to. One possibility could be Messenger, which is getting more and more of its own features and becoming something much greater than Facebook’s chat’s feature. In fact, you don’t even have to be a Facebook user to use it anymore. It also now has its own platform.

    Instagram is also becoming a major marketing force, and Facebook is finally getting serious about monetizing it with recently announced ad initiatives. Don’t be surprised to see new App Links functionality there either.

    Developers can find the documentation for App Links here.

    In terms of Bing’s role, look for a renewed focus on search thanks to a new deal with AOL. This could mean new search ad-based opportunities for app content.

    Images via Bing, Facebook

  • Yahoo Said To Show Google Results Instead Of Bing In Firefox

    Well, this is odd.

    Yahoo is reportedly displaying search results – both organic and paid – that are powered by Google when some users search using Mozilla’s Firefox web browser. That is according to Aaron Wall at SEOBook, who has screenshots comparing the usual Bing-powered version of results and the Google-powered ones.

    It’s completely unclear just how widespread this is occurring, whether it’s just a test, or whether this is something more users can expect to see.

    According to Wall, it’s only happening in some versions of Firefox. I’ve tested the most recent update to the browser on Mac, as well as Chrome and Safari, and have been unable to produce a Google–powered search results page by performing a Yahoo search. It’s all Bing for me so far. For the record, I did this using the “seo tools” query that Wall displays in his screenshots.

    It’s been an interesting period for search engines powering other services. There have been a lot of changes in the past year, and things are starting to get a bit convoluted.

    As you probably know, Yahoo and Microsoft have had a search and advertising partnership in place for many years. This came about after a Yahoo Google deal fell apart over antitrust concerns. Over the years, it became apparent that Yahoo wasn’t incredibly happy with the arrangement – particularly since ex-Googler Marissa Mayer took over as CEO.

    Earlier this year, however, the two companies amended their agreement. While some expected them to part ways, the companies decided to stay together, but under terms that are largely better for Yahoo, which gets increased flexibility to enhance its own search experience on any platform. The partnership is non-exclusive for both desktop and mobile. Yahoo will continue to serve Bing ads and search results for “most” (51%) of its desktop search traffic, it said, and can do whatever it wants on mobile.

    It can also do whatever it wants with that other 49% of desktop, which is presumably where these Google-powered results come in. We haven’t heard anything about any kind of arrangement between Yahoo and Google (who are already battling for the loyalty of Firefox users), but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an arrangement.

    In fact, the companies have expressed interest in working with one another even since Mayer has been running Yahoo. We’ve reached out to both companies for comment, and will update accordingly.

    Late last year, Mozilla and Yahoo announced a partnership that sees Yahoo take over the default search experience in Firefox in the U.S. – a spot that used to belong to Google. Since then, both Google and Yahoo have been employing various tactics to get users to select their respective search engines as their defaults.

    In the most aggressive instance of this yet, Yahoo entered a partnership with Oracle to prompt those downloading Java updates on Chrome and Internet Explorer to switch to Yahoo. This is a big deal considering that Java is the most popular programming language and Java software is reportedly installed on 89% of desktop computers.

    Making the search landscape even more complicated, this week also saw the announcement of a new long-term deal between Microsoft and AOL, which sees Bing taking over the Google-powered spot for AOL, which is now owned by Verizon.

    Update: Search Engine Land got a statement from Yahoo: “As we work to create the absolute best experiences for Yahoo users, from time to time, we run small tests with a variety of partners including search providers. There is nothing further to share at this time.”

  • What Marketers Should Know About The AOL-Bing Deal

    What Marketers Should Know About The AOL-Bing Deal

    Microsoft and AOL announced a major agreement which sees AOL assuming management and sales responsibilities for all of Microsoft’s display, mobile, and video ad inventory across the U.S., U.K., Canada, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan. AOL will run the ads across Microsoft’s MSN homepage and verticals, Outlook Mail, Xbox, Skype, and in apps.

    The two companies also made a ten-year global search and search advertising deal, which sees Bing power search for AOL (across all screens) starting at the beginning of next year.

    Will this deal have any impact on your approach to search marketing? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    “We have enjoyed a terrific relationship with Microsoft, and this expanded partnership is a win for both companies and our advertiser partners as our industry continues to rapidly transform and evolve,” said AOL President Bob Lord. “This collaboration further validates our leadership position in digital advertising and the shift to automation, while also allowing Microsoft to focus on what they do best: industry leading services and search innovation.”

    “This deal is further evidence of the quality of Bing results and the performance of the Bing Ads marketplace,” said Rik van der Kooi, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft. “And we will continue our focus on delivering world class consumer services and content and look forward to partnering with AOL to market them.”

    Bing controls 20% of the search market share in the U.S., and this will serve as a key partnership for growth. There hasn’t been much change in the market for several months. Google still has 64%.

    Google has been the search engine powering AOL search for many years, so this is another significant partner that Google is losing. It already lost Firefox (in the U.S.) to Yahoo.

    Danny Sullivan, who has been covering the search industry as long as anyone, recalls: “When Google first won the AOL deal back in 2002, it was a huge deal for that company. Google was still up-and-coming; AOL had substantial search traffic. Google managed to renew the deal every time it came up since, such as in 2010. But no more.”

    “That’s no great loss for Google, however,” he adds. “AOL has only about 1% of the search traffic in the US, versus Google’s 65%. Google will likely not notice the loss. Potentially, the company didn’t even fight for or hard to renew the deal. The loss even helps Google argue that it’s not as completely dominant in search as it’s often criticized for.”

    He still goes on to say that it’s a “great win for Bing”.

    To me, it doesn’t seem like anything that’s a great win for Bing should be downplayed too much for Google, particularly considering that it is losing other distribution partners, and Apple is moving further and further into its own universe.

    Keep in mind that as of last week, AOL is owned by Verizon, so there may be a lot of new opportunities for AOL to get its various offerings in front of more people. It’s not unthinkable that its search functionality, which will eventually be powered by Bing, could see an increase in usage.

    What Does This Mean for Marketers?

    More than anything, what the deal means for marketers is an increased distribution of their Bing marketing efforts. That goes for SEO and paid search efforts. Here’s a look at an AOL search results page right now:

    Screen shot 2015-06-30 at 10.04.12 AM

    It’s basically a Google results page with AOL’s logo and some minor cosmetic changes. You can easily imagine this as the Bing alternative.

    “Many Search advertisers are growing their audience reach by advertising on multiple publishers,” says Hoiling Wong at Marin Software. “While Google may still be the dominant force in the market, Bing is quickly growing. An April 2015 study conducted by Merkle | RKG shows that spend in Bing for Q1 2015 grew 36%, compared to Google’s 13%.”

    With a deal like this, it stands to reason that growth will only continue.

    “The extended reach combined with the controls within Bing Ads will give marketers opportunities to reach even more customers at the right ROI,” says Bing in a blog post about the AOL deal. “We’re excited about our partnership with AOL and will continue to evaluate additional partners to bring new opportunities to our customers.”

    Microsoft’s Bing Ads business is doing better than you probably thought. The company said this week that it’s a multibillion dollar business, and that it’s critical that it continues to monetize it. That means they’re going to focus on making Bing Ads better and more effective than ever, and with AOL handling the display ad duties, that should be easier for them to do.

    Those looking to drop their dollars on search ads look to Bing as the first alternative. That alternative is bound to become more attractive as time goes on.

    Do you expect to increase your Bing budget? Let us know in the comments.

    Images via Bing, AOL

  • Uber Makes a Big Mapping Play, Hires 100 Bing Engineers

    Uber is continuing its quest for maps self reliance, and is set to acquire a chunk of Bing’s mapping assets.

    Both Microsoft and Uber confirmed the deal to TechCrunch, but wouldn’t get specific on the terms.

    The deal will see Uber absorb around 100 Microsoft data collection engineers.

    A move this large proves that Uber really, really wants to get out from under Google’s thumb and create its own, independent mapping technology. The team the Uber is taking from Microsoft helped collect and integrate Bing’s 3D and street views.

    Uber is taking many steps to create its own mapping infrastructure. Currently, Uber relies on other major mapping services (mainly Google) to operate its fleet of drivers – and the company naturally would like to be able to break those ties and map with its own technology. Earlier this year, Uber bought mapping company deCarta – both its tech and team.

    Uber downplayed the acquisition, saying it would go to help improve existing products.

    “A lot of the functionality that makes the Uber app so reliable, affordable and seamless is based on mapping technologies. With the acquisition of deCarta, we will continue to fine-tune our products and services that rely on maps –- for example UberPOOL, the way we compute ETAs, and others – and make the Uber experience even better for our users.”

    But with today’s big hiring news, there can be no doubt that Uber wants to build its own maps product from the ground up.

    Earlier this month, Uber poached Google Engineering VP Brian McClendon to head its new Advanced Technologies Center. McClendon worked for over a decade as Google’s head of Maps, Google Earth, and Street View.

    Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center was created earlier this year in a partnership with Carnegie Mellon University. The research initiative is focusing on “mapping and vehicle safety and autonomy technology.”

  • ‘Not Provided’ To Expand As Bing Encrypts Search Data

    ‘Not Provided’ To Expand As Bing Encrypts Search Data

    Microsoft announced that Bing will start encrypting search traffic by default meaning that like much of your Google traffic in Google Analytics, you’ll start seeing “not provided” for query data from Bing.

    Google started doing this back in 2011. It’s a little surprising that Bing has taken this long to follow suit, but they’re doing so now nevertheless. Bing’s Duane Forrester says in a blog post:

    At Microsoft, we’re committed to helping users keep their data safe and secure. That’s why we support the industry’s move to use of TLS protocols as part of our effort to expand encryption across our networks and services. Bing has already been offering users the option to encrypt search traffic for about a year and a half now. Beginning this summer, we will begin the process of encrypting search traffic by default. This means that traffic originating from Bing will increasingly come from https://www.bing.com as opposed to http://www.bing.com.

    With the move to encrypted search by default we will continue to pass along a referrer string so that marketers and webmasters will be able to identify traffic as coming from Bing. However, to further protect our users’ privacy, we will not include the used query terms.

    Unless you get the majority of your search traffic from Bing, this probably won’t affect you too badly as you’re probably already used to it from Google. If you do get most of your search traffic from Bing, have fun.

    Microsoft says it will still provide some limited query term data through its Search Query Terms Report, Universal Event Tracking, and Bing Webmaster Tools.

    Image via Bing

  • Bing Sheds Light On Yahoo Click Volume

    Last month, Microsoft and Yahoo announced some changes to their ongoing search and advertising partnership. Under the new terms, Yahoo would gain increased flexibility to enhance its own search experience on any platform. Also as part of the agreement, Microsoft would be the exclusive salesforce for ads delivered by its own Bing Ads platform, and Yahoo would continue to be the exclusive salesforce for its Yahoo Gemini platform.

    Some Bing Ads advertisers have wondered what the amended deal means for Yahoo click volume. Microsoft has been listening.

    “We have heard from many of you, our customers, that there is interest in understanding the actual Yahoo click volume being served through Bing Ads today in relation to the increased flexibility Yahoo received starting May 1st,” says John Cosley from the Bing Ads team.

    “Bing Ads continues today to deliver ad clicks against 99% of Yahoo PC traffic and nearly 90% of Mobile/Tablet traffic,” he adds. “As a result, Yahoo click volume served through Bing Ads remains stable, averaging 99% of Yahoo’s April baseline across all devices in the U.S. The 1% movement is normal and expected. Bing Ads marketplace performance will be subject to small changes, both positive and negative, each week-on-week due to the seasonality of queries.”

    They’ve set up a page where you can better get an understanding of Yahoo click volume changes as time goes on. Cosley says the page will be updated with new data each week.

    Image via Bing

  • Bing Wants To Better Surface Mobile Apps

    Bing Wants To Better Surface Mobile Apps

    Bing is trying to make it easier for mobile application developers to get their apps found in search results. It’s expanding its “Actions Intelligence” to Bing and other Bing-powered search products, such as Cortana, and creating a “massive” index of apps and app actions.

    To make it easier for developers to participate, it’s utilizing standardized markup, which developers can use on their websites to establish the link between content and apps and between content entities and the actions that apps perform on them. Bing is utilizing App Links, which Facebook launched last year as an open source project, and Schema.org.

    They have an new tool in the Bing Webmaster Tools pubic tools area. It’s called the Applinks Markup tester, and shows you how Bing extracts the App Links data from your page and performs a validation process.

    “Establishing a link between apps and your content is not where it stops,” says Vincent Wehren, Product Lead Webmaster and Publisher Experiences at Bing. “More likely than not, searchers are trying to perform an action, complete a task using your app. So how can we establish the relationship between the content (entity), the task (action), and the provider (app) that can complete the task? The Bing intelligence platform is already pretty good at inferring some of this information based on its understanding of your site, but as always, being explicit about these things from the publisher side gives you an edge. Your tool of choice in this case: schema.org.”

    “Expressing the relationship between entity, action, and your app using schema.org is a bit more involved than App Links markup, but it is extremely powerful in that it allows your web page as well as app to rank a whole new range of entity action-oriented queries,” he says. “Naturally, your app developer needs to do also do some work to open the app with in the right location, and this work is usually specific to the platform or device. I dedicated a section of my App Discovery talk at Build 2015 to this very topic. The talk was geared towards enabling app deep linking and app actions on Windows 10 and Cortana. However, the applinks.org website has detailed instructions on the navigation protocol on iOS and Androidas well and Bing is creating an app index that covers all of these platforms.”

    Read this blog post for much more on implementing all of this.

    Bing has already started analyzing the web for App Links and actions markup, and is telling people to get started right away. It’s also readying mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal, not unlike Google, which recently announced app indexing as a ranking signal on Android devices.

    Image via Bing

  • Mobile-Friendly Update Bing Announced In November Still Hasn’t Rolled Out

    Mobile-Friendly Update Bing Announced In November Still Hasn’t Rolled Out

    In November, Bing principal program manager Mir Rosenberg wrote in a blog post, “We started probing web pages for ‘mobile friendliness’ and ranking web pages accordingly on our users’ mobile phones.”

    Bing had begun using mobile friendliness as a ranking signal for a “small but steadily growing percentage” of mobile queries. Apparently that growth was pretty slow, as a full roll-out is still only on the horizon.

    In a new blog post, Bing’s Shyam Jayasankar announced that Bing “will be rolling out mobile friendliness as a signal in ranking.” Apparently the older announcement was just about future plans, thought it didn’t make it sound that way. Either way, like Google, Bing also cares if your site is mobile-friendly.

    Last month, Bing began labeling results as “mobile-friendly” just like Google started doing last year as it prepared to get sites ready for the algorithmic adjustment.

    Here’s an example of how results might change as a result of the mobile-friendly signal:

    Bing isn’t saying exactly when the update will fully roll out, but you probably won’t need to worry about it too much if you’ve already made your site mobile-friendly for Google users or are in the process of doing so.

    As an added bonus, Bing is working on a tool to help webmasters analyze webpages using its mobile-friendliness classifier. This will become available in a few week. Or you could probably just use Google’s.

    More about Bing’s mobile-friendly efforts here and here.

    Google’s mobile-friendly update didn’t have quite the major impact on search results that many expected. Will Bing’s?

  • Rick Santorum Still Has a ‘Frothy’ Search Problem

    It looks like there’s a good chance that former Senator Rick Santorum is going to jump into the fray.

    He appeared on Fox News Wednesday to discuss his plans with Greta Van Susteren, which at this point is only an announcement to make an announcement. RickSantorum.com asks you to “save your seat for a special announcement on May 27. The site is currently paid for by “Rick Santorum Presidential Testing the Waters”.

    Let’s just say there a decent shot Santorum runs for the Republican nomination.

    And if he does, it’s important to note that he still has a bit of a search problem – albeit a much smaller one than he’s had in the past.

    – – – – – – – – – – –

    First, a little background.

    Years ago, Santorum drew the ire of popular blogger Dan Savage by making some unsavory comments regarding the gay community. During an interview where he stated the position that consenting adults have no expectation of privacy, Santorum equated homosexuality to bigamy and incest. He also made some comments relating homosexuality to bestiality, although he has maintained that the were taken out of context.

    Either way, Savage and some other activists were less than pleased. They launched a campaign to redefine the definition of the word “Santorum.” Through SEO tactics and link-trading, they were able to push a website called SpreadingSantorum.com to the very top of the Google search results for “Rick Santorum.”

    Over at SpreadingSantourm.com, you’ll find a brown splatter graphic behind a definition that reads “santorum (n): 1. The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.”

    Probably not what a Presidential hopeful wants showing up when people search his name.

    In 2012, the last time Santorum ran a GOP primary race, SpreadingSantorum.com was the very 1st results fetched for searched of “Santorum” and the third result when you searched “Rick Santorum” on Google. It wasn’t just a Google problem either, as both Bing and Yahoo showed similar results.

    Rick Santorum isn’t unaware of his “online reputation” issue. In 2011, he contacted Google and tried to convince the company to remove the result.

    “I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it,” Santorum said. “If you’re a responsible business, you don’t let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country. To have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can’t handle but I suspect that’s not true.”

    Google’s response was basically sorry, no dice. “[Google] does not remove content from out search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content and violations of out webmaster guidelines.”

    And Santorum remained frothy.

    – – – – – – – – – – –

    Flash forward to 2015, and Santorum’s problems have been mitigated but not erased.

    A Google search for “Rick Santorum” shows no result for SpreadingSantorum on the first page. SpreadingSantorum doesn’t even show up on a search for just “Santorum”.

    But the ghosts of the past are still present.

    The top result (for a logged-out user) for “Santorum” is the Wikipedia page explaining the neologism campaign:

    Scroll down a bit and a 2010 Mother Jones article called “Rick Santorum’s Anal Sex Problem” is the 5th result below the news box.

    On Bing, the Wikipedia page for the Santorum neologism is the first result below the news box and image box.

    But it’s over on Yahoo where Santorum still has a big problem. Here’s what you see when you search “Rick Santorum”:

    SpreadingSantorum.com – preview definition and all – is the second result, directly below the one for his official site.

    Santorum also has a small domain problem. He’s locked up RickSantorum.com, which is lucky for him. But here’s where Santorum.com redirects:

    Of course, Santorum is far from the only candidate to have to domain problem. Ted Cruz didn’t lock up TedCruz.com, and now he’s getting trolled. Carly Fiorina didn’t lock up CarlyFiorina.org, and now she’s getting trolled. Rand Paul had to waste over $100,000 to secure RandPaul.com.

    – – – – – – – – – – –

    If Rick Santorum does indeed announce intentions to seek his party’s 2016 nomination, people will once again be searching his name

    If he’s lucky, they’ll use Google.

  • Bing Copies Pinterest’s Approach To Image Search

    Bing Copies Pinterest’s Approach To Image Search

    Last week, Bing announced a redesigned image search experience across both desktop and mobile. The changes, it says, will result in more traffic to websites. In fact, it suggested that site will not only get more traffic, but higher quality, targeted traffic.

    While this hasn’t fully rolled out yet, Bing has been giving guidance to webmasters to help them take advantage of this traffic. This involves including markup like Schema.org, OpenGraph, etc. More on all of that here.

    On Friday, Bing made another Image Search announcement. This one is all about users being able to type less and find images more quickly on mobile devices. The update is for both iOS and Android.

    “We know you love to discover images on your mobile devices. Our goal for Bing’s image search is to help you be inspired, learn more, and quickly find great images on any device,” says Bing in a blog post.

    “The best news about Bing’s new image search? No typing required to discover more,” it says. “Typing on mobile phones is hard. Typos are common and are a pain to fix on small screens. This is particularly painful for image searchers, who tend to refine and expand their searches a lot. How do we make searching easier without typing? We’re happy to take on that challenge.”

    Here’s a video looking at what they’ve done.

    Look familiar? That’s probably because it’s nearly identical to Pinterest’s Guided Search:

    Bing:

    Pinterest:

    As Bing puts it, search terms are “bubbled” in the search box into “intelligent groups,” and you can “pivot your search around each entity” by tapping the bubbles. You can use the “smart suggestion bubbles” to refine your search.

    So, yeah, it’s exactly like Pinterest’s Guided Search. And that’s fine, because Pinterest’s Guided Search was a major improvement to search on that service.

    “As we build a discovery engine, searching is a key way for Pinners to find and save ideas Pinned by others,” a spokesperson for Pinterest told WebProNews in January. “Searches derived from clicking on guides is one of the major sources of our search traffic, with guide clicking up 3x over the last 6 months.”

    Bing is no doubt hoping for such an increase in image search traffic.

    Pinterest must really be on to something with its search improvements if Bing is emulating them. Bing has historically followed more of a Google path on feature additions, while certainly taking on some of its own approaches. It’s pretty interesting, however, that Bing is favoring Pinterest’s style for such a staple of the search experience as opposed to the Google style.

    Of course Google Image Search does operate in a similar fashion, but includes thumbnail images for its version of “guides” and provides a much more limited amount of suggestions.

    Bing doesn’t mention Pinterest as an inspiration for the feature, but it was as major component of the redesign announced last week. Where available, Bing Image Search will show Pinterest collections with the image, among other things, including where to buy products. Bing has actually been utilizing Pinterst boards in image search since 2013, but the redesign improves the integration. It did say that the Pinterest feature would be expanded to include sites beyond Pinterest.

    Images via Bing, Pinterest

  • Yahoo And Microsoft Rework Search Alliance

    Yahoo And Microsoft Rework Search Alliance

    Well, they’re not breaking up just yet. Yahoo and Microsoft just announced that they have agreed to amend their search partnership following the delay of talks about how to proceed, which led to a lot of speculation that they may part ways.

    The companies have vowed to continue working together, and have “reaffirmed commitments made by both companies in the original 2009 agreement, while implementing changes to keep the partnership strong and productive”. Both companies, the announcement says, are “committed to maximizing the alliance.”

    “Our global partnership with Yahoo has benefited our shared customers over the past five years and I look forward to building on what we’ve already accomplished together,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “Our partnership with Yahoo is one example of the diverse partnerships we’ll continue to cultivate in order to have the greatest impact for our customers.”

    “Over the past few months, Satya and I have worked closely together to establish a revised search agreement that allows us to enhance our user experience and innovate more in our search business,” said Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo. “This renewed agreement opens up significant opportunities in our partnership that I’m very excited to explore.”

    So the rumors about Yahoo working to improve its own search offering are true, apparently. This should make it easier for Yahoo to succeed when the companies eventually do part ways.

    The amendments to the deal come in two main areas. Yahoo will have increased flexibility to enhance its own search experience on any platform. The partnership is non-exclusive for both desktop and mobile. Yahoo will continue to serve Bing ads and search results for most of tis desktop search traffic, it says. Presumably, this leaves Yahoo free to do what it wants on mobile, where it has been focusing most of its efforts.

    The company has been rumored to be in talks to buy Foursquare, which could bring some interesting things to the table on mobile, though other reports have dismissed the rumor as BS.

    The second area that has changed in the Microsoft deal is that there is an increased “agility and sales focus.” Microsoft will be the exclusive salesforce for ads delivered by its own Bing Ads platform, and Yahoo will continue to be the exclusive salesforce for its Yahoo Gemini ads platform.

    “Integrating the sales teams with those responsible for engineering will allow both companies to service advertisers more effectively,” the companies said in the announcement. “Microsoft and Yahoo plan to begin to transition managed advertiser sales responsibilities this summer.”

    “The partnership, formed in 2009 by both CEOs’ predecessors, established a transformative relationship between the two companies — one where Microsoft exclusively provided paid and algorithmic search services on PC to Yahoo,” it says. “The alliance also designated a revenue sharing agreement where Microsoft pays Yahoo a percentage of Bing Ads revenue delivered from Yahoo searches. This existing underlying economic structure remains unchanged with today’s updates.”

    In related news, the latest comScore search market report is out, showing that Bing’s share in the U.S. has grown to 20.1% with Yahoo at 12.7%.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Bing Wants Your Site To Be Mobile-Friendly Too

    Bing Wants Your Site To Be Mobile-Friendly Too

    Let’s be honest, if you weren’t planning on making your site mobile-friendly for Google, you probably aren’t going to for Bing, but if you do make your site mobile-friendly, which is obviously good for users in addition to search engines, you might find that you do get some better rankings in Bing as an added bonus. You should also find that Bing tells users your site is indeed mobile-friendly when they happen a across it in search results.

    As you’re probably aware, Google is about to implement an algorithm change that makes the mobile-friendliness of a website a signal in its rankings. If your site is mobile-friendly by Google’s standards, you might get a boost in rankings. If it’s not, you might get a big drop in rankings. It’s just one of many signals Google takes into account, but it’s an important one. Google clearly wants to give its users a good experience, and more and more of those users are on mobile devices more frequently than before. The signal is supposed to launch on April 21, which is coming right up.

    Microsoft announced mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal back in November, but it is now labeling results as “mobile-friendly” just like Google started doing last year as it prepared to get sites ready for the algorithmic adjustment (h/t: Search Engine Roundtable).

    “Traditionally, Bing wasn’t heavily relying on specific device and platform signals to provide web results to the user. You would get similar results on your PC, Mac, or smartphone for most of your searches,” said Bing principal program manager Mir Rosenberg in a blog post in November. “However, we live in a mobile-first, cloud-first world and we need to think about our users’ search experience on mobile devices differently. As a result, we’ve been really intensifying how we look at web results across these mobile devices. We have a long and exciting journey ahead of us, but as a very first step in this long-term investment, we started probing web pages for “mobile friendliness” and ranking web pages accordingly on our users’ mobile phones.”

    They showed this example to give you an idea of how search results would change as a result of the mobile-friendly signal:

    “In this example, we know which pages are mobile-friendly so automatically rank them higher with the new update, whereas previously the searcher would have had a much bigger change of landing on a non-mobile friendly page or possibly had to wait for a redirect to a mobile-friendly page,” wrote Rosenberg. “As always, there are many ranking factors at play — and mobile raking has its fair share of Secret Squirrel stuff — but here are some of the things that we do to improve mobile relevance: We identify and classify mobile and device-friendly web pages and websites; We analyze web documents from a mobile point-of-view by looking at content compatibility, content readability [and] mobile functionality (to weed out “junk”, that is pages that are 404 on mobile or Flash only etc.); Return more mobile-friendly URLs to the mobile SERP; Ranking the results pages based on all of the above.”

    There’s a good chance you missed Bing’s news in November, because Bing just doesn’t command the attention that Google does since its share of the search market is so much smaller. Still, there are a lot of people that do use it, and it does also power Yahoo Search (at least for the time being). At this point in time, by the way, Yahoo does not display a mobile-friendly label in search results.

    Now that Google has lit a fire under webmasters’ butts, it’s good to know that improvements made to sites for Google should also help these same sites in Bing.

    If your site isn’t mobile-friendly yet, and you haven’t gotten started looking into how to improve it, you can start here for a look at what Google specifically tells webmasters to do. The article will point you to all the necessary links for Google’s own documentation.

    You might also want to watch this Q&A session Google released on the subject. It’s an hour long, so you know there’s a great deal to consider.

    Google also recently named some specific things to avoid for a mobile-friendly site. These include: blocked JavaScript, CSS and image files; unplayable content; faulty redirects; mobile-only 404s; app download interstitials; irrelevant cross-links; and slow mobile pages.

    On that last note, Moz just put out a really good article that will help you address the speed factor.

    While we’re on the topic of getting traffic from Bing, the search engine also announced some changes to image search, which it says will improve your traffic.

    Images via Bing

  • Bing: New Image Search Means More Traffic For You

    Bing Image Search just got another makeover. This is its second since September. This time, the company is telling webmasters it will be able to send them more traffic, and high quality traffic at that.

    Do you think you’ll be able to get more traffic with Bing’s new image search experience? Let us know in the comments.

    What’s it do?

    Bing Image Search will now let users scroll or swipe up to get helpful information and/or info on where to buy an item. Where available, it will show users places to buy the product in the image, related searches based on the image, Pinterest collections with the image, more sizes of the image, and pages that have the image.

    The product feature is in beta, but for some product images, it will show places the item can be bought. This should improve over time. Bing says it’s focused on more precisely detecting pages where products can be purchased.

    It also says the PInterest feature will be expanded to additional sites beyond Pinterest. Bing Image Search has been utilizing Pinterest boards since 2013. This is a better integration.

    When the user clicks on an image, they’ll get a redesigned view, which is cleaner than before, but still shows related searches, the source page, and image metadata, as well as the option to pin it to PInterest. You can also review results in a slideshow. Here’s the before and after:

    The mobile experience is also being updated.

    Images include a reminder to “use images responsibly,” and a link to more information on copyright.

    Bing: Drive more “high quality” and “engaged” traffic to your site.

    So what about that whole traffic thing?

    Bing says in a blog post, “Images are pervasive in search; over 1 billion image searches are performed every month by over 100M users on Bing.com and its search partners. Relevant images are presented in many web searches and many billions of image results are presented across all devices and search partners every month. As a webmaster, increasing your exposure on Bing Image Search will drive more high quality traffic to your site.”

    “Image search engagement has grown significantly over the past few years,” it says. “Users have discovered that image search is a powerful way to find more and do more. We’ve observed our customers wanting to complete tasks through image search such as purchasing a print of an image or the product in it, finding related items and learning more about it. We’ve evolved our image search experience to help our customers efficiently locate the best place to accomplish their search tasks. Rich metadata from the source site is prominently showcased to help our users and drive traffic to the content providers.”

    What do I need to do?

    Webmasters need to utilize structured data to increase their visibility and potentially drive more traffic. Bing says to use Schema.org and OpenGraph, but notes that Microdata, Microformats, and RDFa are also supported.

    “When Bing crawlers fetch your page content, these schemas are utilized to understand your content along with the associated metadata to enrich our knowledge surrounding an image,” the Bing team explains . “The more metadata provided with an image, the more likely we will surface your content. Other than the typical popularity and descriptive elements, adding even more context such as if the image is related to a recipe or a product are especially useful. For a few examples of structured markup, please see below.”

    It gives this example for a product image using Schema.org:

    Webmasters can also use meta tags with content attributes and no visible text rendered to the user, Bing notes.

    And here’s an example for OpenGraph:

    Bing says to use its Markup Validator to verify that it can be parsed by its crawlers.

    “We also support the mediaRSS and PubSubHubbub feed formats,” it says. “Direct feeds are preferred to allow us to have the most up-to-date and most comprehensive knowledge about your site. Bing Image Search can then surface your content in a relevant and effective manner. Please contact us directly using the email listed below to discuss logistics around sharing a feed.”

    The new image search experience will be rolling out over the coming weeks across PCs, tablets, and smartphones (including iPhone and Android). There’s also a new Chrome extension that brings Bing Image Search info into webpages as you browse them.

    Do you get a significant amount of traffic from image search? Do you expect Bing’s changes to help? Let us know what you think.

    Images via Bing

  • Is Yahoo About To Drop Bing?

    Well, here’s another juicy layer to add to the speculation about whether or not Yahoo and Microsoft will soon end their search alliance. Yahoo has reportedly been building its own mobile search engine that it’s currently testing, and that experience removes the “Powered by Bing” stamp that has been attached to Yahoo’s search results since the alliance took effect.

    Should Yahoo drop Bing? Tell us what you think.

    Buisness Insider’s Nicholas Carlson, who had a book about Marissa Mayer and her “fight to save Yahoo,” published earlier this year, got his hands on the test experience, and found that the results don’t say powered by Bing. He reports:

    A couple weeks ago, a person who claims to have been working in Yahoo’s search division until recently told us that, under Mayer, Yahoo built its own mobile search engine. This source that Yahoo was testing it with 15% of its mobile users. We’ve been unable to corroborate all of those details, but — thanks to instructions from that source — we were able to able to load the new version of Yahoo’s mobile search engine.

    While he does acknowledge that none of this proves Yahoo is going to break up with Microsoft and launch its own search engine, and that the results from the test seem to match Bing’s results, he asks why the search results pages have done away with the Bing branding.

    It’s a good question, made all the more interesting by other recent reports. The question of whether or not the two companies will continue their partnership already remains up in the air. They have a decision to reach this month after extending a deadline to reach an agreement by 60 days after February 23. There has already been plenty of speculation since that round of the news cycle, when Reuters reported:

    It was not immediately clear if the extension signaled progress or lack of consensus between Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The announcement to extend the talks comes a few days after Nadella’s mother passed away in Hyderabad, India, according to a report in The Economic Times.

    Microsoft has had nothing to say about any of this.

    Yahoo said over a week ago, “We value our partnership with Microsoft and continue discussions about plans for the future. We have nothing further to announce at this time.”

    Carlson’s report has a fresher statement from Yahoo, which says, “Search is an important part of Yahoo’s business and we’re always experimenting and looking to improve the experience for our users. We have nothing to announce at this time.”

    Let further speculation commence.

    You have to note that the search alliance was formed when both companies were being run by different people, and that Mayer has reportedly blasted the deal both in public around the office.

    Last year, Kara Swisher (a frequent reporter of Yahoo goings on) reported that Mayer was making a “big push to return the company to the search business”. The report said she was trying to “move Yahoo squarely into competition with both Google and Microsoft in an attempt to regain control over one of its key revenue streams.”

    “To do so, she has ordered up two under-the-radar initiatives that could potentially move the company into algorithmic search, as well as search advertising, again,” Swisher wrote.

    There’s been talk in the media about Google and Yahoo potentially partnering as well. The two have partnered on contextual ads, and Google executive chairman has reportedly said in the past that the company would “love to be a search partner for Yahoo“.

    Google and Yahoo did try to partner before Yahoo and Microsoft partnered, but it never happened due to the threat of regulatory action. Google has since settled an FTC antitrust investigation.

    Carlson takes the angle that Mayer is wanting to go to war with Google, which would also make sense given their battle for Firefox users. In November, Yahoo and Mozilla entered a partnership that made Yahoo the default search experience on Firefox, replacing Google, which had held the spot for the past decade. The deal showed some great early results for Yahoo in terms of search market share.

    In March, StatCounter released data indicating Yahoo was largely able to hang on to the initial gains it made in the search market, but that growth has pretty much come to a stop. The numbers for February were as follows: Google 74.9%, Bing 2.5%, and Yahoo 10.7%. That’s U.S. search share. Yahoo’s slowed growth hasn’t kept Google from more aggressively trying to get Firefox users to switch back to its search experience. It’s even been showing large ad-like messages to users on unrelated search results pages, begging them to switch to Google.

    It also sounds like all three will be competing for a similar spot in Apple’s Safari browser, as Google’s deal with Apple nears its expiration. On an earnings call, Mayer showed a great deal of enthusiasm for the prospect of Yahoo getting that.

    Would you like to see Yahoo go off on its own? Let us know in the comments.

  • Getty Images & Microsoft Bury Hatchet, Partner

    Getty Images & Microsoft Bury Hatchet, Partner

    It appears that Getty Images and Microsoft have buried the hatchet after legal issues last fall, as the two just announced a new partnership, which will see Microsoft taking advantage of Getty’s imagery.

    The two companies will work together to develop “image-rich, compelling products and services” for Microsoft products like Bing and Cortana, which use Getty’s library of images. Both companies’ tech teams will partner to provide real-time access to that library as well as associated metadata “to enhance the Microsoft user experience”. This will take place over the coming years.

    “With our new partnership, Microsoft will use Getty Images’ latest API innovations and our award-winning visual content to take search experiences to a new level,” said Getty Images Senior Vice President of Business Development Craig Peters. “Our technology teams will work together to create beautiful, engaging applications and services for Microsoft users with licensed content and attribution for photographers and other content creators.”

    “This collaboration enables Microsoft users to take full advantage of Getty Images’ speed to market, structured metadata and unrivaled content,” added Microsoft Executive Vice President of Business Development Peggy Johnson. “We look forward to working with Getty Images to provide the next generation of image depth and breadth for our users.”

    Back in September, Getty sued Microsoft over a tool it had launched, which enabled people to embed slideshows of images from Bing Image Search on their websites. The tool was called the Bing Image Widget, which Microsoft described in the following manner:

    Bing Image Widget enhances your web site with the power of Bing Image Search and provides your users with beautiful, configurable image collages and slideshows. What’s more, Bing Image Widget is easy to configure.

    Users could get the code by going to the Bing Image Widget page or via Bing Webmaster Tools. They could simply copy and paste the code onto a page, and adjust the settings to meet their needs, and then get a collage of images. It basically looked like a group of image search results, and probably wouldn’t have even been used all that heavily, but just to make sure, Getty sued Microsoft over it, deeming it a “massive infringement” of copyrighted images.

    In October, Reuters reported that Getty had failed to convince a federal judge to take action against Microsoft as the company had already taken the widget offline voluntarily. Again, the amount of usage it was likely to attract was probably not worth the headache of a legal battle. From the Reuters report:

    Getty asked U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan to slap Microsoft with an injunction on the new product. Even though Microsoft removed the widget the day after the lawsuit was filed, Getty pressed forward with its case. Getty told Cote not to believe Microsoft’s claims that it would not relaunch the widget because it did not rule out creating a new widget that could still infringe on Getty’s content.

    …

    “We would have preferred a judicial mandate for (the widget) to stay down,” said John Lapham, Getty’s general counsel. “But the question of whether or not you’re allowed to take and use somebody else’s copyrighted materials without any attribution or compensation is still live and before the court.”

    As far as I’m aware, Microsoft has not relaunched any version of the tool since, though it had indicated to Getty at the time that if it did, it would do so with filters, attribution notices, and other copyright-related details. The original tool is still offline.

    Earlier last year, Getty had released its own embeddable image tool, enabling bloggers and website owners to use some of their images as long as they did so with the provided embed code that ensured all proper attribution, links, and other requirements.

    While the tool doesn’t give you access to Getty’s entire library, does let you search 50 million photos, and gives you quite a few embeddable options.

    “It’s easy, legal and free,” Getty says on the landing page for the tool.

    Shortly after suing Microsoft, Getty launched a mobile app called Stream designed to let users view and share its photos. It was the company’s first consumer app.

    On Tuesday, Getty also announced a new “Boards” feature that it says “sets a new standard for collaboration in the creative industry.”

    The offering lets people curate, share, and discuss Getty’s photos and video content on GettyImages.com and via a new redesigned Getty Images iOS app.

    “In today’s always-on global economy, media and creative professionals collaborate with peers and clients who are just as likely to be across the world, as across the office,” said Getty Images CTO Steve Heck. “A true collaboration tool, Boards create a dynamic platform to bring your projects to life using the world’s best imagery. By establishing seamless workflows, Boards ensure creatives can capitalise on ideas and opportunities at any time, working across various devices, wherever they may be.”

    Boards let users view collections of images and videos according to specific projects or creative interests, without requiring them to sign in to gettyimages.com.

    Getty Images has over 180 million images in its library, as well as video.

  • Need More Storage? Google and Microsoft Are Both Giving It Away Right Now

    Are you running out of cloud storage? If so, two major providers are giving it away right now.

    Microsoft is offering 100GB of OneDrive cloud storage for the next two years – and all you have to do is sign up for Bing Rewards.

    Don’t know what Bing Rewards is? It’s pretty simple. Bing Rewards offers credits for everyday searches, and those credits can be used to redeem things like gift cards and electronics. If you sign up for it today, Microsoft will hand you 100GB of free storage.

    It’s a pretty sweet deal if you’re looking for cloud storage, even if you have no intention of performing enough Bing searches to amass enough credits to buy things. if you can tolerate the occasional email, I’d say go for it.

    If you’re already a Bing Rewards member, don’t worry – all you have to do is activate your bonus cloud storage.

    Google’s not offering as much cloud storage, but you don’t have to sign up for anything to get it. In honor of Safer internet Day, Google is offering to permanently bump your Google Drive storage by 2GB.

    All you have to do is complete Google’s security checkup by February 17. All that entails is verifying your recovery phone number, email, and taking a peek at your recent activity and giving Google the a-ok.

    Free storage. Cool.

    Images via Bing, Google

  • Auction Insights Launched For Bing Ads In All Markets

    Microsoft announced Auction Insights for the Bing Ads web user interface back in November. At the time, it was a U.S. only release. On Monday, the company announced that the feature is being expanded to all Bing Ads markets.

    The feature enables advertisers to see how they’re performing in comparison to other advertisers who are participating in the same auctions.

    “It can help you make strategic decisions about bidding and budgeting choices by showing you where you are succeeding and where you may be missing opportunities for improved performance,” says Microsoft’s Lei Wu. The Auction Insights report is available directly on your Campaigns page. Check your report by clicking the ‘Details’ drop-down menu and selecting either ‘Selected’ or ‘All’ under ‘Auction insights’ section. You can generate a report for one or more keywords, ad groups and campaigns that meet a minimum threshold of activity. It also provides the flexibility for you to quickly build an aggregate view with the selected time range.”

    “The competing websites listed in your Auction Insights report are those that enter the same auctions as you and are eligible for the same impressions that you are. Competitors aren’t necessarily determined by how similar their keywords, match types, or other targeting settings are to your own. This report will not reveal the actual keywords, quality, bids, or setting from your campaigns, and it will not give you insight into the same information for others.”

    The Auction Insights report can also be utilized from the Bing Ads Intelligence Excel add-in.

    Image via Microsoft

  • Yahoo Really Wants That Apple Deal

    Yahoo Really Wants That Apple Deal

    Yahoo made some big waves in late 2014 when it partnered with Mozilla to replace Google as the default search experience in Firefox. Apple’s similar deal with Google is near its expiration, and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer seems really interested in that.

    Do you think Apple should drop Google and go with a different search provider like Yahoo or Microsoft? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Yahoo reported its Q4 earnings on Tuesday. During the conference call, Mayer said this about the Mozilla partnership in her prepared remarks (via SeekingAlpha’s transcript):

    External sources estimate that Mozilla has 3% to 5% of the North American search market. So this is a significant opportunity. We began serving Mozilla partly through December, so we’ve not yet had a complete calendar month of data on the deal but we are already impressed with the volume Mozilla search has brought to our marketplace and the insightfulness and agility of the Mozilla team…Our new partnership with Mozilla gives us reason to be optimistic that search will continue to be a growth story.

    During the question-and-answer session, Mayer was asked about Yahoo’s ongoing search partnership with Microsoft (which she reportedly hates) as well as the company’s new deal with Mozilla to become the default search experience in the Firefox browser. She said the “search alliance” hits the halfway point later in Q1, and that the deal has provisions that allow them to consider adjustments to its relationship with Microsoft. They’re actively exploring options and different models, she said.

    She said:

    On Mozilla overall we haven’t disclosed the financial arrangement between the two companies…it’s about 3% to 5% of the North America search market and overall, the volume’s been fantastic and the teams are just terrific to work with. That said it’s a really significant partnership and will always take time to equilibrate and tune our performance with the Mozilla traffic. And so we are very hopeful about it but at this point really too early to tell.

    There have been reports that Yahoo is also interested in taking Google’s place as the default search experience in Apple’s Safari browser, which would be huge for the company in terms of gaining more significant market share. Apple has in recent years been distancing itself more and more from Google. Mayer was asked about this during the Q&A as well. She said:

    The Safari platform is basically one of the premiere search engine in the world, if not the premiere search engine in the world. We are definitely in the search distribution business. I think we stated that really clearly in the past and I think with Mozilla and also in addition we brought Amazon and eBay onboard with smaller distribution partnerships in Q4, we are in search distribution business and anyone who is in that business needs to be interested in the Safari deal.

    The Safari users are among the most engaged and lucrative users in the world and it’s something that we would really like to be able to provide. We work really closely with Mozilla to ultimately bring to their users an experience that they designed and that they feel really suit those users and we welcome the opportunity with any other partner to do the same, particularly one with Apple’s volume and end user base.

    In other words, yeah, she really wants that deal. Kara Swisher who has covered Yahoo for years probably better than anyone else in the industry, liveblogged the earnings call, and commented, “Mayer appeared to practically salivate at the prospect if Apple throws over Google for someone else. Issue: Microsoft. Another issue: Yahoo search technology would have to be majorly upgraded.”

    In response to another question, Mayer went on to say more about Yahoo as a search partner in response to another question:

    Well certainly on search and across the board we pride ourselves on being the best partner in Silicon Valley. We work across the board with Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, we have different Samsung, we have different partnerships with all of these different providers and it’s not easy, they can’t look at each other but we work well with them.

    She said the reason they work so well is because of how flexible Yahoo is.

    In 2014, things started to get really interesting for Yahoo’s search business for the first time in a long time. 2015 may just shape up to be a major comeback year for the company on that front.

    Google is already showing concern about Yahoo’s place in Firefox. If Yahoo scores the Safari deal, it’s going to be a whole new ballgame.

    Google has been trying to get people to switch back with messages like this:

    And one on the Google homepage in the Firefox browser, which says, “Get to Google faster. Make Google your default engine.”

    Google also reported its earnings this week, and also discussed Yahoo’s deal with Mozilla a little. CFO Patrick Pichette said (via Seeking Alpha’s transcript):

    You’ve all heard the announcements about Mozilla. And so when we don’t comment on the details of any of our partnerships that we have, having said that, we continue to do two things that really matter. One is our users continue to actually go in, if they love Google, they will continue to find Google, whichever platform, whichever browser, and that’s really what we’ve focused on doing.

    And then the second piece is the way to win this in the long-term, right? It’s very simple. You just make wonderful products. And when you make wonderful products that are magical people will find them….partnerships matter. But at the core of it, you need partnership, because you have a phenomenal product. And that’s what we’re going to continue to build this amazing company.

    Last week, Merkle | RKG released its Digital Marketing Report for Q4 2014, which looked at the impact of the Yahoo/Mozilla deal on paid search.

    “We’re now able to assess the impact of the deal on Yahoo’s share of Firefox paid search traffic, which grew from 12% at the beginning of December to 30% by the end of the year,” the report said. “However, digging deeper reveals that Yahoo’s share of Firefox 34 paid clicks has been in decline ever since the first big wave of updates in the second week of December. While the initial rollout saw Yahoo’s share rise to a peak of 43% on December 10th, that figure was just 36% by December’s end.”

    “This is primarily the result of users switching the default search engine of their browsers back to Google, as shown by the corresponding increase in Google’s share of Firefox 34 paid clicks throughout the month of December,” it added. “All in all, it appears the deal will move about 2% or less of total paid search traffic from Google to Yahoo. This is far less than the 10%+ of paid traffic that stands to be on the table if Safari default search were to change hands, which news outlets have reported is a possibility in 2015.”

    According to that report, Bing and Yahoo outpaced Google in paid search growth, not only because of the Yahoo Firefox deal, but also rapid growth from Bing Product Ads.

    Do you think Google is in danger of losing any significant amount of market share? Do you think Apple will drop Google? Would it go with Yahoo? Tell us what you think.

    Note: This article has been updated from a previous version to include additional information.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons