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Posts Tagged ‘bing’
Monday, May 13th, 2013
Google might have the lion’s share of the search market, but Bing and Yahoo! are still important. Between them, they have close to 15% of the search market. Of course, they fluctuate up and down and at times have a total of 20% between them. Usually, Bing has a little more than Yahoo! and that’s okay. Not everyone can be on top.
While all the search engines generally look at some of the same criteria, there are differences.
Bing is more closely aligned with Facebook. You can push your Bing rankings higher if you have a strong Facebook network and promote your links to your Facebook friends. Google has its own social network with Google+. Yahoo!, however, seems to be more interested in domain names with age. Google likes aged domains as well, but with over 200 ranking algorithms any one ranking factor is going to have less influence on its own.
The differences between the search engines tell me that diversity is very important. You don’t want to rely on just one search engine for all of your traffic. You want to diversify your traffic sources.
This is very important. If some new website next year starts taking traffic away from Google and the search giant fades into oblivion (remember MySpace?), then you will be thankful you diversified your traffic sources. That’s why Bing and Yahoo! are still important.
Tags: bing, google, search engines, search marketing, website traffic, yahoo
Posted in SEO for Small Business | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013
A few days ago, Facebook introduced Graph Search. You can sign up here.
With Graph Search, Facebook users will be able to search and find business recommendations from their friends. This is good. And there are certain types of businesses that will benefit from this in a big way. These include:
- Local businesses
- Restaurants
- Artists, musicians, and authors
- Travel destinations
- Any business where a recommendation might be expected
Picture a young lady planning a wedding. She needs a wedding photographer. Who will she ask? Where will she go for a recommendation? Her friends? And where are her friends? On Facebook.
I can see Facebook Graph Search being used this way and it could very well put a small dent into Google Search. If anything, Bing will likely get a boost as search results not found on Facebook will automatically default to Bing, the search engine that has had a relationship with Facebook for a couple of years now.
The Facebook-Bing relationship has already benefited Bing by a couple of percentage points in market share. It’s possible that Graph Search can add one or two more.
That doesn’t mean that Google will lose its dominant position in search. That’s not likely. But it does mean that searchers could alter their current search habits slightly to make room for Facebook Graph Search. That will most definitely help certain types of businesses that often rely on recommendations for acquiring new customers.
Tags: bing, facebook, google, Graph Search, search
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »
Monday, October 1st, 2012
Bing seems to think searchers want to know the Klout scores of topical experts featured alongside your search results. Maybe they do. Do you?
When you search a topic, you get the traditional results, followed by a column of paid results, followed by the Know bar. If you’re logged in through Facebook, the top of the bar are people you follow who “might” know something about what you’re looking for. I found this angle to be fun but not all that helpful.
Below that is a list called “People Who Know” — these are experts in the field. Roll over one and you get the side pop you see above. That’s where you’ll find the Klout score if it’s available.
This might be helpful. It might even be a way to find new people to follow and connect with on Twitter and Facebook. But do you really care about their Klout scores? If you do, your probably in the minority. From what I’m reading, most people don’t care too much about Klout scores. But that could change.
For marketers, this new Bing Klout combo could be a new way to find influencers. The downside is a lack of consistency in the results.
If Bing can make the results more consistent and helpful, then maybe they can change people’s minds about Klout. But I think Klout will have to get better at measuring social influence. Who knows? Maybe some day all online marketers will be looking at Klout scores as a way to judge who to follow and befriend.
Tags: bing, Klout, social influence, Social Media
Posted in Social Media | 4 Comments »
Friday, September 7th, 2012
Bing keeps trying to convince, by one way or another, that its search results are better than Google’s. They’ve tried just about everything they can think of. But they have one more card to play (or maybe not), and they’re playing it pretty heavy right now.
This is probably the best idea that Bing could come up — a blind search engine test.
What if there was a website where you could type in your search query and get side-by-side search results from both Google and Bing and see which one was the best? Well, there is. It’s called Bing It On.
According to Bing, the power behind the test, Bing results are winning 2 to 1.
Bing would have been a fool to even try this if they weren’t confident they’d win more often than lose. And if the results are honest (of course I have no reason not to trust them), then it looks like Bing may very well produce better search results. However, I do expect Google to retaliate. If Bing’s results are better overall, then I’d imagine Google will do some tweaking to change that. They always do.
But if it’s true and Bing’s results are better, does that mean online marketers should change their focus from Google to Bing? Not necessarily. Google still gets more traffic. But I’ve always been of the opinion that you should find traffic from as many sources as possible.
I encourage you to take the Bing It On blind test. See what you think.
Tags: bing, google, search engine, search results
Posted in search engines | 3 Comments »
Thursday, August 23rd, 2012
Bing, the search engine, has recently started promoting specific Quora content in its search results sidebar. If you search for information on Bing and you are logged in, you’ll see a sidebar featuring your Facebook friends who have posted information or liked information about that subject. If those friends are also on Quora, then you’ll see a link to an answer they’ve provided on Quora with a snippet. This is a cool feature.
While this feature won’t necessarily catapult Quora to the top of the social media websites, it could give the Q&A site a boost in reputation. After all, Bing is the second largest pure search engine online.
Earlier this month, WebProNews reported that bloggers can now embed Quora quotes into their blog posts. That’s a very powerful feature as well and could serve to give Quora more exposure. Quora is already the best looking and most useful Q&A site online. It’s a place where experts on any topic can showcase their expertise by answering questions posed by the community.
Answers on Quora tend to be long and detailed. That makes the site valuable in its own right. If Quora can get an additional boost in popularity from other websites, that will increase its value to marketers.
Tags: bing, Quora, Social Media
Posted in Social Media | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012
Microsoft has announced that starting August 1st they will charge for the use of Bing’s API. This is going to kill a lot of free SEO tools, and it could very well put a dent in Bing’s overall market share as well.
Let’s face it, pursuing a solid SEO strategy is getting more expensive all the time. Some smaller companies already cannot afford to pay an SEO consultant for services, so they end up doing it themselves if at all. Many of them use free SEO tools because they can’t afford the more expensive ones. Now, they may not have a choice.
If your free SEO tool stops working after August 1st, you’ll know why. But this move could hurt Bing as much as anyone else – at least, in search market share.
There are a lot of free tools and toolbars that use Bing as the primary search engine. Conduit is a very popular toolbar creator that uses Bing. Will they continue to use Bing if they have to pay for the API? It’s anyone’s guess, but if they choose to end their relationship with Bing they will likely go back to using Google.
For Microsoft, this could be more about the money than it is anything else. In fact, I’d say that Microsoft is looking for ways to maximum its revenue on the search engine. In that case, they may not mind losing market share to Google.
Tags: API, bing, search engines, SEO tools
Posted in search engines | 4 Comments »
Thursday, June 7th, 2012
If you like Google’s Webmaster Tools, then you’ll likely find Bing’s new Webmaster Tools helpful. Some of these look like they’re mirrored or modeled after Google’s tools. And they probably are. But that doesn’t matter if they’re helpful.
Here’s a look at the new tools Bing is offering webmasters and that are now in beta:
- Link Explorer. Looks helpful. You can find link information about any domain on the internet whether you own it or not. Great for competitive research.
- SEO Reports. You’ll get a weekly report telling you how well or how poorly you are doing on 15 SEO best practices.
- SEO Analyzer. You can enter the URL of any page on any of your verified domains and Bing will analyze that page to see how you are doing with SEO.
- Fetch as Bingbot - See how your web pages look to the Bing searchbot.
- Canonical Alerts – Receive automatic alerts to let you know if your rel=canonical tags are working properly.
- URL Removal Tool – Don’t want a particular page listed in the Bing SERPs? Have it removed.
- Keyword Research Tool – Research keywords using Bing’s keyword research tool and compare the data to Google’s
What do you think? Are any of these tools helpful to you as a webmaster? Will you use these Bing webmaster tools? Which ones do you think will be most helpful to you as a webmaster?
Tags: bing, google, Webmaster Tools
Posted in Tools for Small Business | 4 Comments »
Thursday, March 15th, 2012
A post on the Bing Webmaster Central blog is well worth reading if you optimize your website for both desktop and mobile users. The post discusses Bing’s preference for a single URL no matter what device a visitor is using to access your website. There are several points worth noting on the post, and while this post relates specifically to Bing’s approach, one wonders if the same issues exist with Google? Those points include:
- Mobile specific URLs rarely rank in search results since there are insufficient indicators to give the URL any value. This could actually be a negative and work against your website.
- The more URLs you have, the more search engine crawler you’re going to receive. A large site could see a lot of bandwidth being used, just by the search engines. If your website has only the one URL per item of content, then that will have less of an impact on your bandwidth.
- Single URLs are easier to manage. If you have multiple URLs for the same content, then that will create more work.
Bing’s preference is for websites to perform client browser detection and delivering content based on the outcome of that detection. If you must use separate URLs for the delivery of pages to mobile devices (particularly the popular m.website.com), then Bing suggests a search engine crawler block through your robots.txt file. Bing’s point about mobile URLs not appearing in search results is well noting, especially if separate URLs have the potential to harm your search engine optimization efforts.
The question that website owners and SEO specialists now need to look at is whether or not Google will follow suit, and whether or not some of these issues already affect current websites. Do your mobile specific pages appear in search results? If not, you may want to consider a different approach to delivering content to these devices.
Tags: bing, google, mobile search
Posted in Mobile Marketing for Small Business | 7 Comments »
Sunday, August 14th, 2011
I don’t think many Internet marketers would question whether or not social signals are used in search. It’s pretty clear that they are. The only question is, to what extent?
Facebook and Bing have a very close relationship. In fact, if you are logged into Facebook, then take a look at Bing’s home page. You should see along the top navigation menu a little Facebook icon next to your name. If you click your name or the down arrow, then you’ll see a link. Click that link and it takes you to a page explaining Bing’s social search feature.
In short, Bing allows you to see what your Facebook friends like, not necessarily what they are searching for. And your Facebook friends can see what you like.
Google does something similar with Google+. If you conduct a search on Google, you’ll see a +1 icon next to the search results. If you +1 an item and you are logged into your Google+ account, then that item will appear on your +1s list. The same for the people you connect with through +1. Then you can see each other’s +1s – if that person has set their preferences to allow you that privilege.
But Google goes one step further. On the search results page, it will tell you which of your Google+ friends have shared an item on Google+ or on any social network they’re a member of. So you can really watch what your friends are sharing.
This is just the tip of the iceberg on social signals. There are plenty more, and I think the search engines will get a lot more sophisticated using those signals for search purposes. It will be interesting to watch.
Tags: bing, facebook, google, search, social signals
Posted in search engines | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, June 28th, 2011
Todd Mallicoat aka Stuntdubl recently fielded a series of SEO questions on Twitter. Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz picked them up and answered them on his blog.
One of the questions, and the one I thought was the most interesting, is
Next year, what will effect (sic) SERP’s (sic) more, Twitter or Facebook?
Good question, and the intricacies are really important. As Rand points out, Google and Facebook aren’t exactly friends. In fact, Google has decided not to use popular Facebook indicators in its search algorithms, which means that Facebook does not really affect Google’s SERPs.
However, Bing and Facebook have a much more friendly relationship. Bing’s SERPs are social to an extent that you can Like them and Share them easily on Facebook. And Bing does use Facebook indicators for ranking purposes. But Bing still is way behind Google in search market share. I mean waaaaay behind.
Take a look at Twitter, on the other hand. Twitter messages are often returned, both at Google and at Bing, in realtime search. The realtime search at both search engines often filter into true organic search. But Twitter doesn’t have anywhere near the influence that Facebook has.
So which has more influence or, as the question is stated, which will have more next year?
Rand says it depends on whether you mean directly or indirectly. Directly, he says, it will be Twitter. Facebook will be influential in terms of second order effects like tweets, links, the social graph, etc.
Those are good points, and I’ll have to agree. With Facebook taking on a direct competitive stance with Google, it will likely never have as much of a direct impact on search results as Twitter. Until Bing becomes more competitive with Google, which may never happen, Facebook’s influence upon the SERPs directly is going to be small. Twitter, on the other hand, has not proven itself to be the popular communications medium that Facebook has. So it’s possible that Twitter will never be a threat to Google. Since it won’t be a threat, or be perceived as a threat, the search engine will have nothing to lose in allowing Twitter to influence the search results.
Tags: bing, facebook, google, search results, Twitter
Posted in search engines | 2 Comments »
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