Posts Tagged ‘bing’

Why We Should Root for Bing

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

I read recently that Google sold roughly $22 billion in advertising last year. $22 billion is also the Gross National Income of Kazakhstan, or that of Costa Rica and Jamaica combined. I don’t know why, but I never sat down to think about how much money Google has been raking in over the years. They’ve managed to corner a huge market share in search, and while Yahoo has failed to really compete, Microsoft is dedicated to doing just that.  

bing-23A few weeks ago, Steve Ballmer, CEO at Microsoft, said he was willing to "spend to compete", to the tune of 5%-10% of Microsoft’s overall operating income on search for up to five years. It’s apparent that the folks at Microsoft have figured out there is money in search. But what does this competition mean for Google?
 
The first thing that competition does in free enterprise is keep the heavy hitters honest. Not only that, it facilitates improvement and growth. When a company, service, or brand is in competition with another, each will play off the actions of the other for the benefit of their own. An improvement is made by one, causing the other to take stock and reinvent. This ebb and flow creates for, what is usually, a very productive system.
 
yahoo1As competition relates to Google, up to now they’ve had only a few real contenders. Arnie wrote last year about Google and Yahoo’s head-to-head, and that as internet marketers we need Yahoo to thrive. Microsoft has, in the past few months, taken over where Yahoo tried to jump in, but the overall premise is still the same: competition for Google is essential to safeguarding the integrity of search. The difference this time around, however, is that Microsoft is more than prepared — in the form of billions of dollars,google3 and innovative search solutions.
 
Early numbers are showing an increase in Microsoft’s overall search market share a month after Bing’s unveiling. There’s no doubt, though, that they have a lot farther to go. It may just come down to who can master real-time search, and address the issues facing current searchers today: outdated and irrelevant results. 

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Link Building with Bing

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

bing-launch-light-showAs the smoke clears and the newness wears off, Microsoft’s revamped search engine Bing is starting to rub off on me…..I know, I know, I’m eating my words from Friday’s post. I have to admit, the simplified search function helps in my personal life, but what implications does that have with regards to link building?

Bing, the ‘decision engine’, is designed to create an easier experience for searchers by providing you with more detailed and precise search results. A one word search, such as "truck", yields basically three results each for: what "it" is, who produces "it", variations of "it", prices for "it", reviews for "it", images of "it", videos of "it", and locations to find "it".
 
What does this simplification mean for link builders? The end of eccomerce and first page listings for small businesses? I wouldn’t go that far, but in time I imagine we will be seeing less and less small businesses in the top listings, and more of an emphasis on large brands dominating search results. All of this is assuming that Microsoft’s $100 million advertising plan works, and we all start using Bing more than Google. Without that, Bing is simply just another Live – unpopular and unused.
 
So what is a small or large site to do in preparation, besides looking at the usual webmaster tools? Well for starters, take a look at your meta titles, keywords, and descriptions. Are you trying to ‘crowd’ your homepage with too many keywords? It may be time to revamp your site and reorganize the keywords associated with each of your landing pages. If you are trying to target too many keywords to one page, then presumably search engines with detailed search, like Bing, will have a harder time determining what your page is really about.
 
This concept is nothing new, but one has to draw the conclusion that when search engines get more detailed about results it means they’re looking for even more details than before. With the previous example search term "truck" the site owner could possibly include a page that hits each and every one of the categorical results that show up for the term "truck". Dedicate a page to answering: what "it" is, who produces "it", variations of "it", prices for "it", reviews for "it", images of "it", videos of "it", and locations to find "it".
 
Bing still has a ways to go to compete with Google’s market share, but with events like Hulu’s Bing-a-thon and creative commercials it may be sooner than we all thought!
 

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Wave and Bing: The Highlights

Friday, June 5th, 2009

Two search giants, Google and MSN, recently announced some pretty big developments that are sure to change the face of search as we know it.

Google leaked information on Wave, a new communication and collaboration tool via video recently. I had a chance to watch some of it….forgive me, I didn’t watch all one hour and twenty minutes of the thing. I have to admit, I was pretty impressed with what I did see. This will be an open source communication device that, to me, looks like a mash up of Twitter, Facebook, G-mail, and Google search. Mashable wrote a complete guide to Wave, that has some pretty good information.
 
google-waveA Few Highlights:
 
Real-time Chat- Alright, so it might not sound so cool to some, but in most areas of Wave you can see what the other person is typing during chat sessions…..letter by letter while they are typing it. Not so great for those of you that edit your messages before you hit enter, but cool nonetheless.
Embed- Wave’s are embeddable on blogs and pretty much any website. From Wave you are able to embed and post on your blog, and respond from Wave to any comments, postings, etc directly from Wave.
Open Sourced- Developers will be able to adapt Wave for their own uses. They will be able to develop apps, which increases the number of sites integrated into the program.
E-mail Enhanced- One of the key features with Wave is that when sending e-mail, or any other note/Wave, you are able to respond to one particular section of that document, without having to reply to all of it.
 
I was completely geeked when I first learned about Wave. I’ve been wanting something like this for quite some time now. It’s so hard trying to manage multiple social media accounts and with Wave I see the ability to interact and connect with ALL my friends at once with one user interface, instead of upwards of twenty that I am active on right now. Also, I love the e-mail features and the fact that it is open sourced. Just reminds me that I really need to start learning how to make apps!
 
Microsoft unveiled Bing recently, their new and improved search engine to online users this week. Have you checked it out? A few of their pitches in a recent commercial: Search overload is officially over…a decision engine…..It’s time to bing and decide.
 
Some of the key highlights to note: bing-2
 
Task and Decision Sessions- Bing was developed to assist users in the most basic of searches, such as checking your flight information, or something as simple as the date and time. Your search results will come back relative to your particular location, the information taken from your IP address of course.
Simplified Results- SERPs are grouped categorically in a way that allows for quick navigation of the results. More listings are on the first page of the SERPs, which can be very good for some.
Enhanced Video- Bing claims to have better search capabilities when it comes to video, but most don’t see it. Many of the search results are repeated, and some are very irrelative.
 
While Bing is a great site, they do have a few bugs to work out. In the end, it’s just a tricked out Live. For link builders, the biggest benefit of Bing is their task and decision session mentality. If you conform your techniques and start focusing your efforts to conform to their new guidelines, it’s likely you’ll have results on the first page of Bing quickly…..well faster than Google at least. I haven’t started using it, but probably will when they get everything worked out. Wait…but by then Google’s Wave will have come out.. :) Tell us your thoughts!

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