WebProNews

Tag: stefan weitz

  • Bing: We’re Not Giving Up On Search [Updated]

    Update 2: Asked for additional comment or further clarification on Stefan’s comments, the spokesperson says, “We have nothing further to share.”

    Update: The initial headline to this article was “Bing Abandons Hope Of Competing With Google (In ‘Pure’ Search)”. Bing apparently takes issue with this. A spokesperson says it’s a “misrepresentation of Bing’s position, as well as Stefan Weitz’s statement. Bing is not giving up on search.”

    Well, the headline didn’t exactly say “Bing is Giving Up On Search,” but clearly they’re defensive about it. I’ve reached out to Bing for a more official statement.

    It’s unclear if they were okay with Search Engine Land’s version: “Bing: It’s Unlikely That We’ll Take Search Share Away From Google”. It’s also unclear if the Register’s quotes were inaccurate. So far, I don’t see any updates on either of these articles. Take from that what you will.

    Original article: It’s been a while since we’ve heard much about the “Bing it On” challenge, which was Bing’s attempt to convince people it provided a better search experience than Google, even though the challenge stripped out key features of both search engines. It did little to advance Bing’s market share.

    The holidays are just around the corner, and we haven’t seen any new “Scroogled” campaigns (because it’s a play on Scrooge, not “Screw Google,” remember?) emerge yet. That could still happen. These ads didn’t always focus on search, but stretched into other areas like email and computers.

    It appears that Bing is basically abandoning hope that it will actually take a significant amount of market share away from Google when it comes to pure search. Bing’s Stefan Weitz spoke at the Web Summit this week. The Register (via Search Engine Land) shares some quotes from him:

    “The question is, where is search really going?” he said at the Web Summit conference in Dublin today. “It’s unlikely we’re going to take share in [the pure search] space, but in machine learning, natural language search… and how we can make search more part of living. For us, it’s less about Bing.com, though that’s still important. It’s really about how we can instead weave the tech into things you’re already doing.”
    …

    “For pure keyword search, we’re around 30 per cent in the US, not so much in Europe,” he said. “But search in different areas of life? That mix is to be determined. I’m committed to making sure we have our fair share of search in the future.”

    In terms of advertising, the Yahoo Bing “search alliance” saw its biggest paid search market share increase in five years in Q3, according to research released by IgnitionOne. This followed Yahoo’s search market share hitting its lowest point ever in the summer, though things are looking up for Yahoo on the search front based on the company’s latest earnings report.

    Image via Bing.com (Yes, you can just type in a “W” and get a suggestion to go to www.Google.com).

  • Is Gmail Privacy As Bad As Microsoft Says It Is?

    Last week, Microsoft launched a new “Scroogled” campaign. In case you don’t recall, the company launched a campaign under that name during the holiday season, calling out Google Shopping for its paid Google Shopping model (a move that has been controversial). This time, Microsoft is using the “Scroogled” brand again to attack a decade-old feature of Google’s Gmail – the one that Google uses to target advertising to users by algorithmically scanning emails.

    Are you concerned about Gmail’s ad targeting practices? Do you consider them to be a violation of privacy? What is your opinion of the ads themselves? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    We had a conversation about Microsoft’s latest attack on Google with Stefan Weitz, Microsoft’s senior director of Online Services (also one of the more well-known faces of Bing). While Microsoft recently launched a new mail product – Outlook.com – many find the timing of this attack a bit strange, given that Gmail has operated this way since its inception.

    “We want to make sure people understand how much of their privacy they are giving up when they use Gmail,” Weitz tells WebProNews. “If people understand they are giving up their privacy and they wish to do so, that’s their choice. But we want to make sure they understand this is going on. What surprised us, even after a decade of this practice, is that over two-thirds of people don’t know what is happening and when they find out, nearly 90% say it should stop. People are saying it doesn’t seem right. It seems creepy. The question users have to ask is: Do you want one company to have that much information about you?”

    Google did alter its privacy policies last year, essentially consolidating them into one that spans across its various products, making it easier for the company to use data from one of its services in another.

    Of course, Microsoft does scan users’ emails. Just not to serve ads.

    “We do not scan the contents of user emails for the purpose of showing ads,” says Weitz. “Like many email providers, Outlook.com scans the content of your email to help protect you and prevent spam, gray mail, phishing scams, viruses, malware, and other dangers and annoyances. It is just like how the postal service sorts and scans mail and packages for dangerous explosive and biohazards. Of course, Outlook.com previous article, we looked at what Google says about privacy in Gmail. Google’s PR has been sending around this comment:

    “Advertising keeps Google and many of the websites and services Google offers free of charge. We work hard to make sure that ads are safe, unobtrusive and relevant. No humans read your email or Google Account information in order to show you advertisements or related information. An automated algorithm — similar to that used for features like Priority Inbox or spam filtering — determines which ads are shown.”

    You can read a much lengthier set of relevant comments from the company from an old help center article in that article.

    It should be noted that Google has fired employees in the past after they were caught (in separate incidents) spying on user emails and chats. You can take that two ways: 1. It has happened before. 2. Google does not tolerate such behavior. Presumably, these incidents had nothing to do with ad targeting.

    Microsoft’s new Scroogled ads almost make Google’s ad targeting relevance seem like the subject of the attack in some parts. See the dead cat example in this one:

    “Who wants a free pet exam coupon when the family cat has been put down?” the ad asks.

    “First, it’s important to keep in mind that Google’s practice of earning money by reading personal e-mails is not exclusive to Gmail users,” says Weitz. “This also impacts those who don’t have a Gmail account. If you use another email provider but you send an email to someone else’s Gmail account, Google goes through that too. That’s why we’re also asking consumers to sign the petition on Scroogled.com and tell Google to stop going through their emails to sell ads.”

    “Second, Outlook.com is committed to protecting users’ privacy and offers users the experience they’re seeking in their email provider,” he continues. “Last, I’m not sure how making their targeting even more exact is going to make the 90% of Americans who say it should stop any happier.”

    In case you’re wondering if Microsoft has ever targeted ads based on email message content, Weitz says, “We have never targeted ads based on the content of email messages. Our privacy policy is very clear on this. The bottom-line is we don’t eavesdrop on private communications. We still have ads in Outlook, but the difference is we don’t scan your mail to sell those ads. We think we can still make revenue to pay for the service even if the ads are not directly targeted or related to the private communications that you have. And we give users the option to opt-out, which is a big difference from Gmail.”

    Microsoft told us during the original holiday themed Scroogled campaign that the name “Scroogled” was about “Scrooge” (as opposed to “getting screwed by Google” or something along those lines). We could buy it at the time, given the holiday context. Bing even went out of its way to make A Christmas Carol references in its announcement of the campaign. Now that we’re into February, it’s starting to feel a little more like “screwed by Google”.

    “You can interpret it however you would like, but Outlook.com’s ‘Don’t Get Scroogled’ campaign is purely about prioritizing privacy and making people informed,” says Weitz. “When polled, over two-thirds are unaware that Google reads their e-mails to make money from targeted ads. ‘Don’t Get Scroogled’ is simply a national consumer awareness campaign to educate Americans about Google’s practice of going through the contents of personal Gmail email messages to sell and target ads. That, and the term has entered the lexicon to generally refer to unseemly practices by Google.”

    On a different note, given the rivalry between Google and Microsoft and Microsoft’s relationship with Yahoo, many are wondering what Microsoft thinks about the newly announced deal between Google and Yahoo for contextual ads.

    “I’d say I wonder how Google is using the content [of] your private communications in Gmail to serve ads in other places,” says Weitz on the subject.

    When we spoke with Microsoft’s David Pann last week, he told us that the company would be launching Google-like product listing ads (they’re also launching click-to-call ads with Skype integration) later this year. As long as we had Weitz, we figured we’d see if he had anything to add.

    “We’ll have more to say about new ad products in the future but it’s important to note that they are just that – new ad types,” he says. “As we always do, we will clearly highlight when something is an ad versus organic.”

    In addition to the new Scroogled campaign, Bing has also renewed its Bing It On campaign with new research data.

    Do you think Microsoft is handling online information better than Google, whether that be in email, search or ads? Let us know what you think.

  • When Bing Gets Paid For Shopping Results, It’s A “Happy Accident”

    Last month, Bing launched an attack campaign against Google Shopping, called “Don’t Get Scroogled“. Microsoft’s search engine has consistently been calling out Google’s recent transition form an anyone-can-get-in-for-free approach to a paid inclusion approach for Shopping results, as well as how Google has chosen to disclose this to consumers.

    Do you prefer Bing’s business practices to Google’s when it comes to shopping results? Let us know in the comments.

    We had a chance to have a conversation about this with Stefan Weitz, Senior Director of Search at Microsoft, who tells us the Scroogled campaign has been working.

    “Millions of people have visited scroogled.com and viewed the videos that outline how Google is no longer offering honest shopping search,” Weitz tells WebProNews. “Tens of millions of people have seen our television ads, print ads and online efforts. How is it all working? I can tell you that the campaign is accomplishing what we want – helping people more informed about what they are seeing in search and how what Google once called a ‘particularly insidious’ practice is now status quo for their shopping experience.”

    Here are the Scroogled videos:

    “I can also tell you the number of inbound requests for interviews and more information has exploded as people understand the issue more completely,” says Weitz. “Last, we now even have some merchants who have contacted us to talk about how the new Google Product Listing Ads experience has negatively affected their businesses.”

    But we’ve heard Bing’s side of the story numerous times now, from the campaign itself, and from other articles about it. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land wrote a piece, concluding that Bing is “guilty of the same problems” it calls out Google for.

    We asked Weitz what he’d like readers to know that they haven’t heard before. “I’d tell readers to look at this third party study that outlines what is happening to product selection on Google as a result of their shift to paid ranking,” he says.

    Actually, we did link to that before, but feel free to check it out again.

    “I’d also tell them to look to Google for more honest responses about what they are really doing,” Weitz adds. “Their only response to the campaign was fraught with errors and misstatements whether, intentional or not, misleading readers.”

    “Finally, I’d tell people to look beyond the core issue here and think about the bigger picture,” he says. “They’ve already abandoned one of their core principles that made them a trusted consumer brand and are now trading on that goodwill while surreptitiously changing the rules of their game. What’s next as their margins continue to get squeezed as more usage shifts to lower monetization mobile queries?”

    We asked Weitz to explain why he believes Sullivan’s article is wrong about Bing. He says he’s talked to Sullivan several times about this.

    “While he makes some good points about ensuring all sites do a great job with disclosure, he and I simply disagree on the core issue,” Weitz tells us. “The problem with Google’s Shopping results is that they look like search. They act like search. But everything one sees in the ‘search’ experience is bought and paid for.”

    “In stark contrast, we simply don’t take money in exchange for ranking. Period,” he says. “The vast majority of our product listings come either from free feeds given to us by merchants and our crawler. Yes, it’s harder. Yes, it costs us more money to make sure we offer a quality shopping experience. But at least it’s still real search.”

    “One of Danny’s issues is that we accept feeds from third party aggregators like Shopping.com and PriceGrabber,” Weitz continues. “A merchant may pay to have their products listed in one of those third party sites. We, in turn, get feeds from those sites to make sure we have a complete product offering catalog. And if a customer happens to buy a product from a merchant who has paid one of the third party shopping sites to be listed, we do get a portion of that click revenue. But – and this is important – we DO NOT take into account the fact a merchant paid a third party when we rank our product offers. If we manage to get paid, it’s a happy accident. Unlike Google, it isn’t our business model.”

    On the Bing Shopping “Getting Started” page, which Sullivan displayed in his article, Bing lists one of the benefits of listing through shopping.com as:

    “Higher visibility: Paid offers will be highlighted throughout Bing Shopping, including search result and product pages.”

    Here’s that part highlighted on the page:

    Bing Shopping - Getting Started

    It kind of sounds like if you want higher visibility, you can pay to have offers highlighted throughout Bing Shopping, including search results (and product pages).

    We asked Weitz, “Does this not mean that you get higher visibility in shopping results when you pay?”

    “No,” he says. “It means you MIGHT be listed as our ‘Sponsored Offer’ above our organic product listings or on the right rail of ads. All of which are clearly marked as ads.”

    Perhaps they might want to take another look at the wording. It’s also worth noting that on that page, they’re recommending that method of getting listed (“We recommend this method for the following benefits”). It’s also the first one listed (ahead of submitting a feed to Bing directly).

    Back in the summer, Sullivan wrote a letter to the FTC, calling for an industry-wide transparency review regarding how search engines display paid listings. At the time, we asked Google if they would support such a review. Google said, “Consumers benefit from clear labeling in search results, and we have always clearly disclosed which links are paid advertisements. That said, not all search engines clearly disclose paid results, so we would support a fresh look by the FTC at search labeling and transparency practices.”

    We asked Microsoft/Bing at the time as well. They said, “No comment.” We asked Weitz about this.

    He now says, “Microsoft is mindful of and complies with all applicable laws. We are willing to work with the FTC on relevant matters, including search engine labeling and transparency, and respect the FTC’s role on the issue.”

    Bing is not the only one who doesn’t like Google’s transition to paid inclusion for Google Shopping. There have indeed been plenty of users and businesses complaining about it. We’ve seen it in our own article comments.

    Interestingly, even former Googler Vanessa Fox, who is credited with creating Google’s Webmaster Central, has expressed concern about Google’s shift. In a recent interview, she told WebProNews, “I’m not super happy about the shift to paid placement in product search. I can see the rationale of why they did it, but doesn’t reflect the stated mission all that well.”

    While we had Weitz, he thought we’d see what he had to say about a couple of other recent developments. For one, as you may know, Google has altered its SafeSearch feature in the U.S. to a great deal of outcry. We’ve seen some people say they would start using Bing because of it.

    “I’d say this is what happens when a single player commands a huge share of a market – they can do things consumers don’t want and they can do it with relative impunity,” Weitz says.

    NORAD, which has been tracking Santa at Christmas time with Google for years, made the jump to Microsoft this year (though Google is still tracking Santa on its own).

    Weitz says, “I have watched NORAD tracks Santa for years with my daughter who is now 8 and I can’t tell you the number of times she asked me why Santa was using Google as he flew over the world. I’m glad this year I won’t have to tell her it’s because Santa gets a kickback from Google Shopping.”

    Of course, Google didn’t migrate to the paid inclusion model until this year, so there’s no reason he would have had to tell her that in the past, but point taken.

    Does Bing have a legitimate point with its attack on Google Shopping? Let us know what you think.

  • Have You Seen This TED Talk From Bing’s Stefan Weitz?

    Stefan Weitz, Microsoft’s Director of Search, gave a TED Talk, which TED recently uploaded. The topic of his talk is “how you can win when you’re not supposed to”.

    “You need some kind of argument you can use to justify this existence,” he says.

    This wasn’t a direct reference to Bing’s existence, but it does bring back some memories about Microsoft’s launch of a new search engine not that long ago (when it already had one at live.com).

    Here’s what the description says about Weitz:

    Stefan Weitz is the Director of Search at Microsoft and is charged with working with people and organizations across the industry to promote and improve Search technologies. While focused on Microsoft’s product line, he works across the industry to understand searcher behavior and in his role as an evangelist for Search, gathers and distills feedback to drive product improvements. Prior to Search, Stefan led the strategy to develop the next generation MSN portal platform and developed Microsoft’s muni WiFi strategy, leading the charge to blanket free WiFi access across metropolitan cities. A 12-year Microsoft veteran, he has worked in various groups including Windows Server, Security, and IT. Stefan is a huge gadget ‘junkie’ and can often be found in electronics shops across the world looking for the elusive perfect piece of tech.

    If your’e a fan of either Bing or TED Talks in general, give it a watch. While you’re at it, why not watch a few interviews we’ve done with Weitz over the past few years:

    [H/T: iStartedSomething]

  • Bing Adding Qwiki Presentations Among Blue Links

    Before you go off clicking on any of the blue links listed in a page of search results, Bing really wants you to have a chance to know a little something about your topic of search before you go diving off into the depths of the internets. Bing already incorporates small snippets of information about a topic among search results, courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica, and it also will display recent scores and stats of Major League Baseball games and players. Now, Bing wants to give internet users a warm, welcome handshake to topics and that handshake is called Qwiki.

    Bing announced today that users will begin seeing Qwikis, those surprisingly appealing interactive presentations of pictures and videos that are narrated by a calm female voice from the future, among the links of Bing’s search results. The link to open the Qwiki appears just below the Wikipedia link in the search results (see below).

    Bing Qwiki results

    As you’ve likely predicted, users will click the “Watch the Qwiki” link and the presentation will open up directly on the page.

    Bing Qwiki results

    The pictures used in the slideshow are actually links to other pages that will open up upon clicking, sometimes to other Wikipedia pages, to pictures uploaded onto Fotopedia, or maybe even to a page of related Bing searches (like when I watched the Qwiki for basil and then clicked on a picture labeled “lamiacae” that then opened up a new browser tab of Bing search results for the plant family, lamiacae). The Qwikis are only integrated with Wikipedia content, which explains why the narration you hear in the presentation will be the first couple of paragraphs from the adjoining Wikipedia article, but Bing says that eventually it hopes to include content from other search results.

    Qwiki and Bing may be on the verge of changing search into an interactive experience that has until now not really be tested. It’s ambitious, likely looking to produce active browsing instead of having a person sit there passively scanning over a bunch of similar-sounding links.

    “Search can be so much more than text and blue links,” said Doug Imbruce, the Founder and CEO of Qwiki. “For example, with today’s release, searches for ‘Brooklyn Bridge’ on Bing produce beautiful, interactive playable presentations that have demonstrated increased information retention.” Imbruce added that it’s time to start reshaping the way people think about internet search. “Looking ahead, Qwiki and Bing can help any content creator or web site owner help people do more through increased engagement.”

    Bing Search Director Stefan Weitz offered up this short demonstration of how Qwikis will appear in the results as well as what users can get from watching the presentations.

    The Qwikis embedded in the Bing search results are a pretty savvy counter to Google’s Knowledge Graph, which is essentially the same thing – the first bit of a Wikipedia entry, some pictures, a couple of links – but a lot less dynamic than what Bing’s introduced today.

    As far as the category of flair goes, Bing wins this round, but we’ll have to wait and see if this new feature is enough to inspire internet users to migrate from Google.

  • Bing’s Putting the Human Touch Back in Technology

    Here’s a problem that’s totally born of our modern age: at work I use Macs and at home I use a Windows-powered laptop. Every single day when I go home, I have to re-adjust my motions on the scroll pad of my laptop because it is inverse to the way you scroll with a Mac mouse. I do it literally every single day. A couple of times I thought the computer was frozen because I was doing the Mac directional scroll on the laptop’s touchpad and nothing was moving (because I was already at the top of the screen). It’s hardly a problem to write home about, to say nothing about writing about it in this blanks space, but it’s a minor vexation nonetheless that exemplifies one pervasive detail in technology: no two things work the same way.

    Whether it’s programming the clock on your DVD player or trying to figure out the keyboard commands between Photoshop and GIMP, it’s surprising that the variance in technology commands haven’t imparted some pandemic of digital dyslexia among the developed world. In the pursuit to be original, the accessibility of electronic devices seems to diminish in importance.

    Bing Director Stefan Weitz shared a lament over on Bing’s official blog today about this tragic condition of technology and how, as he says, devices are usually built with a technology-first slant. Instead, he proposes, every computer, remote, gadget, etc. should be designed with people as the foremost consideration.

    To address this issue, Bing’s announced that its developing a “Humanizing Technology” series wherein the Bing team has invited some science and technology luminaries like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Peter Diamandis, and Jane McGonigal to return technology into a more “human-centric” field.

    Perhaps more challenging but also more revolutionary, Weitz added that Bing will be hosting a Virtual Expo that will feature “companies, academics, and technologies that are building things to align with psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. For those to whom Psychology 101 is but a dusty memory, Maslow proposed a structure of needs that, as each of them are met, will eventually elevate a person into a state where their full potential is realized, i.e., or self-actualization.

    What drastic and strangely fascinating developments could Bing produce when designing new technology from the perspective of humanistic psychology? I have no clue, but Bing will educate all of us at what Weitz is calling a “humanities fair” this summer in New York City.

    Truly, it sounds almost like Bing is taking a TED-like approach to advanced technology by simplifying it and making it more applicable and accessible by more people. What do you think? Is technology development really too focused on being unique and not putting a person’s accessibility first? Do you like the lack of uniformity across devices? Let’s hear what you have to say about it.

  • Bing Explains Why Adaptive Search Improves User Experience

    Last week, Bing unveiled a new feature in its continued effort to improve the search experience. The feature is called “Adaptive Search” and is designed to make search results more personally relevant to users.

    Have you tried Bing’s Adaptive Search? Let us know.

    As Stefan Weitz, a director with Bing, explained to us, the technology understands the intent and context of each query because it looks at the user’s search history. For example, if a user typically searches for films and entertainment pieces, when he searches for “Australia,” Bing understands that he is probably not searching for the country. As a result, it would rank the 2008 movie above general information on Australia on the results page.

     

    Weitz told us that Bing is not approaching personalization as a feature of search. Instead, the search engine believes that it shouldn’t be an option since people expect search results to be targeted and personalized to their needs.

    “You should just think about personalized search as search,” he said.

    While Bing is trying to make results more personal, it also wants to make sure users aren’t locked into the recently controversial “filter bubble.” This concept is essentially the concern that personalization would only return results that a searcher is familiar with and agrees with, and therefore not provide any diversity.

    Although Bing takes this concern seriously, Weitz told us that it believes Adaptive Search offers a well-balanced approach for users.

    “You can have personalization and serendipity, which is what really the filter bubble is saying doesn’t exist because of the personalization,” he said.

    He went to say that Jamie Teevan of Microsoft Research studied this area extensively and found that personalization could actually help serendipity in some cases. According to him, the personalization of Adaptive Search is one step toward developing a human-like connection that search engines need, but have not yet been able to do.

    Speaking of other search engines, there have been some that have suggested that Bing’s new approach is similar to Google’s previous query feature. Although Weitz said he has not been able to look at it closely, he did say his understanding is that it is based more on back-to-back queries. For example, if a user searches for a digital camera and the very next query he or she searches for is for Amazon, it is his understanding that Google would return Amazon’s search results for digital cameras.

    Based on this inference, he said that Adaptive Search is “much broader… more complex from a computer science standpoint, but more elegant from a user standpoint.”

    It’s interesting that this Adaptive Search announcement comes just after Google releases its new travel search engine, which is also similar to Bing Travel. When asked about this coincidence, Weitz made a humorous reference to the incident earlier this year when Google accused Bing of stealing their results.

    “I think they’re using the same algorithm to copy our features, I guess,” he said laughingly.

    Putting the humor aside, Weitz did tell us that Bing was pleased with its recent gain in market share. According to him, Bing realizes that it’s a long-term game but will continue to illustrate its commitment through new features and innovation.

    “We want people to expect more from search, and if they expect more from search… we think we can actually grow the overall pie of queries that are out there, and hopefully, because we are the first to market with a lot of these innovative features, we can attract more people to those features because they are only on Bing,” he said.

  • What Bing Is Doing to Stay Strong in Search

    Recent search data from Experian Hitwise, comScore, and, most recently, Compete, all indicate that Bing is gaining market share. Interestingly, the data also shows that Google’s market share has dropped slightly. According to Stefan Weitz, a director with Bing, the search engine has grown every month since its launch.

    “It means that people are giving us a try, they’re finding a good experience, and they keep wanting to use it,” he said told us.

    The increasing market share is likely a result of Bing’s continuous innovations. For instance, realizing the power of location and “deals,” Bing partnered with DealMap in an effort to bring the very best deals to users. Bing deals give users insight into what the best deals are and what deals are trending, all from one location.

    Another initiative that Bing is working on is a new approach to personalization. In the past, personalization relied on collaborative filtering, which made determinations based on user preferences. For example, if person A and person B liked the same item, Bing could assume that person A would like other items that person B liked.

    While this model has worked in some areas, it lacks efficiency in areas such as breaking news. As a result, Bing is working on Project Emporia, which is powered by its Matchbox technology. This new approach focuses on viewing the Web in the context of a collection of objects called “features,” instead of viewing it as a Web of pages.

    “It’s a fundamentally, new approach to how we think about personalizing search and personalizing results,” said Weitz.

    Bing is also working to improve social search. Search engines, previously, found it difficult to identify who users were and what their network of friends was. Now, however, social media behavior has helped them to understand these elements and tie them into search.

    “Now, we’re able to actually bring that behavior that you do everyday in your normal life into search,” Weitz pointed out.

    Although Bing is excited about its recent innovations and its growing market share, it doesn’t consider the other search engines to be losing the battle. Weitz believes that the developments in social search, mobile search, and personalization, actually “expand the pie” for everyone in the search game.

    What are your thoughts on Bing’s progress and innovations in the search market? Does Bing have the potential to dominate search market share in the future?

  • Search for More Search Marketing Opportunities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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