Bing Watch . . . Just Bing It!

Bing Optimization

As the combo of Bing+Yahoo will soon capture about 30% search market share in America.  Allen Moon of entrepreneur.com, as published by msnbc.com, has offered a short list of five things to-do for Bing decision engine optimization. 

The five items have put emphasis on the domain age, website title, more text than graphs, in-bound and out-bound links.

Quoted from the article:

1. The older, the better. Bing places a lot of emphasis on the age of a domain, so if you're just starting out, you might consider buying an older domain in order to get your site a higher ranking.

2. Titles are important. Bing seems to place a lot more emphasis on title tags than Google does, so make sure you use your best keywords in the title tags of every page on your site.

3. Text is terrific. For Google, the amount of text you have on a web page doesn't play a huge role. Not so with Bing, which seems to place a higher value on pages that have at least 300 words.

4. Outbound links are OK. Google has always seemed to frown on the number of outbound links you have on a page. But Bing actually seems to like them--at least for now.

5. Backlinks are even better. If you're frustrated because all of your efforts to get links pointing to your site haven't gotten you anywhere with Google, then good news! When it comes to backlinks, Bing's attitude seems to "the more, the merrier"--as long as the links are coming from relevant sites.

Bing public service ads to fight fraud

According to a blog posted by Tim Cranton, Microsoft Associate General Counsel, Bing’s parent (Microsoft) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have launched join public service ads to alert Bing users to avoid online scams.   In the last few years, many online scammers and fraudsters have been trying to attract innocence users to give away large amount of money to win a lottery (i.e., Nigeria mafia).   In very recent months there were many scams lenders who tried to help users who faced home mortgage foreclosure and failed credit scores.   As the blog stated “…today launched a series of online public service announcements within our Bing search engine to remind consumers to be alert for common online financial scams.“

Bing posted robust growth in worldwide search share for August 2009

A new report published by comScore, as reported by eweek.com, show Bing posted robust query growth in worldwide.

(1) Worldwide search market share

(a) Bing has captured about 3% of the worldwide market search share.
(b) Google worldwide market search share declined slightly to 67.3% in August 2009, compared to 67.5% in July 2009.

(2) Worldwide query

(a) Bing worldwide query for August 2009 grew about 59% from one year ago. 
(b) Google query for August 2009 in worldwide search increased about 62.5% from one year ago.

(3) Worldwide unique visitors

(a) Bing (plus Microsoft Sites) has 708 million unique users.
(b) Google Sites have 868 million unique users.

(4) Worldwide page views

(a) Bing (plus Microsoft Sites) has 98 billion hits.
(b) Google Sites have 251 billion hits.

Bing 2 Go

bingGo, an iPhone app developer who recently created a content app using Bing search engine.  This is new kind of app for Bing users on the go.  According to bingGo website, the iPhone app includes features such as:

• The famous homepage wallpaper of the day
• Search Web, Image, and News
• Search history

(photo: ironsoftonline.com)

Bing rocks

Hitwise has supported early this week report by comScore showing Bing continued to gain market share in America.  According to the latest Hitwise data, as reported by Wall Street Journal online, Bing search market share increased to 9.5% in August, compared to July’s market share of 8%. 

According to the same report, Google and Yahoo market share in America continued to drop in August.  Google search market share in America slipped to 70.2% in August, compared to July’s share of 71.4%.

Bing Maps + Hoovers

A beta version of mapping system with rich demography and business information was launched early today by a joint project of Bing Maps and Hoovers (a Dun & Bradstreet company), as reported by Bing Team. 

Demography and industry information are available at the state, county, and zip code levels.  Users can easily visualize business demographic information using several maps layers. 

See an example of Bing Maps and Hoovers data, click here

Bing Chief Scientist: Search as Dialog

An interesting blog post written by Jan Pedersen, Bing Chief Scientist, appeared on huffingtonpost.com 

Here are few excerpts from the post:

“…only 1 in 4 web queries you do gets you a satisfactory answer”

“…today's search is good at yesterday's problem of finding things on the web, but isn't as good at helping you collect, organize, and act on information to make a decision.”

“…Tomorrow, search will be the easiest way to answer a question or to complete a task.”

“… In the very near future search will have become such an essential companion that we will not understand how people survived without it -- indeed that trend is already happening…”

“…By mining the vast amounts of behavioral data that accumulate through usage and through explicit and implicit contribution to the Web, search engines will become increasingly adept at anticipating user intentions. ..”

“…search engines will begin to understand more of the intention behind a user's query through the application of better web crawling and mining and natural-language-understanding algorithms...”

“…the exponential growth patterns we are currently enjoying will continue for at least the next 10 to 20 years, which will fundamentally transform the information landscape…”

Slow but steady growth in America

The newborn Bing decision engine slow growth continues but steady since its launch.  Bing gained 0.4 percent search market share from July to August.  It captured 9.3 percent of America’s search query volumes, according to comScore’s Qsearch, as reported by techcrunch.com.   Google market share in America dropped slightly from 64.7 percent in July to 64.6 percent in August (a drop of 0.1 percent).

Compared to data before the launch, Bing has gained 1.3 percent.  Live Search (old engine) market share in America was 8.0 percent in May, and now Bing representing 9.3 percent of searches in August, according to comScore.

(table: comScore qSearch, repro from techcrunch.com)

Bing analytics

Yusuf Mehdi, Senior VP of Microsoft gave a presentation regarding Bing analytics tool at the IAB MIXX Conference and Expo 2009 in New York on Monday (September 21).  Like many other analytics tool, the main purpose of the tool is to get better ROIs on ads spending and to find better target audiences for certain type of ads. 

As reported by itworld.com, the latest Bing analytics tool was created to analyze traffic data from search-based and pay-per-click ads that appear in the Bing decision engine.  As itworld.com quoted Mehdi "What we're doing with Bing for vigorous measurement is we're matching the exact ad online with the exact user."   As Mehdi continued to point out “The tool Microsoft created shows where the interest in a marketing or advertising campaign is specifically coming from.”

Bing ad formats with logos and favicons

As Bing continues to grab search market share, Bing is leaning to test several new ad formats.  According to mediapost.com, users who conducted search on Bing will soon see a richer ad experience.  The new Bing ad formats include pay-per-click text lines and link with attaching logos and favicons in the search listings.  Bing team is hoping to attract more advertisers and media buyers to spend their marketing budget to Bing decision engine.

Bing-branded soda can

Bing team is trying hard to influence the software giant employees in Redmond campus with carbonated beverages.  This is a part of guerrilla marketing by using inside users who might help to spread the words outside of the campus.  As reported by Todd Bishop, techflash.com, Bing team has been stacked up employee refrigerators with Bing-branded soda cans.

(photo: Todd Bishop, techflash.com)

Bing + NFL (American football)

As American football (NFL) started the season one week ago, corporate sponsors are targeting player jerseys to deliver their messages to fans.  Bing hometown football team, Seattle Seahawks, is going to wear practice jerseys with giant Bing patches. 

The hometown team’s jersey was spotted in the wild by the Seattle Times' Sharon Pian Chan, and then was reported by seattlepi.com, as Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck has posted a photo of his jersey online.

(photo: http://twitpic.com/hxfzb)

Bing Ten

According to a Nielsen report, Bing has taken 10.7 percent market share of search engine wars, compared to Google at 64.6 percent market share.  Yahoo continued to weakened and dropped to only 16.0 percent.  As per Nielsen and reported by cnet.com, Bing collected a total of 1.1 billion searches, while Google gathered 7 billion searches in August.

(chart: Nielsen)

Bing's bug testers

Using a sample of over 1,100 software developers (bug testers) during the month of August, several tests run by an on-demand testing company (also as an outsourced QA department), uTest.com, found Google had the least number of bugs among search engines, as reported by cnet.com.   The newborn Bing gathered the most bugs.  However, after conducting searches using the decision engine, many bug testers praised the accuracy of Bing results.

Here is a list of findings from the uTest.com study:

(chart: utest.com)

Bing Visual Search (beta)

At the annual gathering of TechCrunch50, Yusuf Mehdi, Senior VP of Microsoft, show a demo of Bing Visual Search.  This is a new Bing feature which allows users to conduct search thru a grid of interactive of images.  Images can be scrolled up-and-down by using a slider. 

During the beta stage, Bing provides visual search that includes about 100 visual galleries.   It also provides a top section with features galleries.  Users can search thru galleries which include digital cameras, animals (i.e., dog breeds), popular celebrities, movies, books, cars (i.e., by make, price or mileage), and sports teams and players (i.e., NFL).

Additional documents for Bing + Yahoo deal

America Department of Justice has requested additional paperwork from both companies, as reported by cnet.com.  The government is reviewing certain requirements before the deal finalized sometime in the first quarter of 2010. 

As cnet.com wrote “the request for additional information doesn't come as a surprise to either Microsoft or Yahoo.”  “Companies have to file the necessary paperwork with the government and then wait 30 days before given clearance to move forward. In some cases, the government requests additional information before making a decision.”

Bing 2.0 secret sauces

Bing’s parent and 20,000 employees’ rally and show off new product demos occurred on an annual basis.  This year was taken placed at Safeco Field in downtown Seattle on Thursday (Sep 10). 

With real-time search gadgets, most meeting attendees utilized Twitter to send messages to friends and colleagues who were watching the company gathering remotely. 

As reported by seattlepi.com, a handful of Twitter members had leaked out few of Bing’s secret sauces (such as amazing satellite maps search).  See those tweets:

@anandkulkarni85:
BING 2.0 terrific !! watch out guys ! bing + silverlight in maps = amazing !! goodbye google

@monteenbysk:
Bing 2.0, out this month, has some exciting new features. Imagine seeing maps plus pics from the neighborhood of a restaurant to try.

Bing porn decision engine

As we reported few months ago, the most advanced feature of Bing is its video feature “autoplay” which allow users to preview videos without login ID.  In its infancy, many news users (incl. International users) were attracted to try out Bing due to this video feature. 

As reported by techcrunch.com, the porn feature continued to hook users using the decision engine.  techcrunch.com noticed a keyword “pornography” search at Google, and found Bing has been buying pay-per-click keyword ads.

(graphic: techcrunch.com)

Bing + Yahoo Decision Engine Optimization (DEO)

As the search market share of the combo Bing + Yahoo will reach about 30%, many DEO (aka, SEO) experts are starting to set up websites to follow Bing’s DEO guideline.  This will help many websites to gain organic search thru Bing’s properties including MSN.com.

Meanwhile, Google remains strong with about 67% of the search market.  The left out search engines will be AOL and Ask.

Bing DEO guidelines, click here

Bing DEO forum, click here

Bing image searches

According to Todd Schwartz of Bing team, as reported by webpronews.com, over 1 billion image searches were conducted by users thru Bing every month.  Search engine experts believe that image search is the second largest search conducted by users.

As per Schwartz, since its launch, Bing image searches have became one of the most popular destinations among Bing users. 

Bing Maps failed in San Francisco bridge closure during the Labor Day holiday

A test run by noahveltman.com and later published by techcrunch.com, show Bing Maps failed to tell its users about San Francisco bridge closure during the Labor Day holiday (September 4 to 8, 2009).

Google Maps told its users about the bridge closure and recommend users to take an alternative route.  While Yahoo Maps rerouted users to take a different path but didn’t disclose the reason.  Bing Maps failed totally, and remained unnoticed regarding the Bay area road conditions.  Bing Maps still continued to recommend the same routes which were closed during the Labor Day holiday in Bay area.

 

Bing & Co

Bing team has just announced that they are adding a new search feature which allows users to share searches with their companions.  The new features dubbed as Bing & Ping, will let user to just hit the mouse in a couple of clicks and the search findings will be delivered to friends thru Facebook or Twitter or email.

An example of Bing & Ping feature, a college sport fan checked for result or score of a game and found the favorite team was winning or losing.  Then, within a couple of clicks, this sport fan could share the instant score update with friends through various social networking, including Facebook and Twitter, or sending a quick email.

  

Click here to signup Bing & Ping search feature

Canadians love Bing more than anyone else

The latest hitwise.com data proved that Bing has the highest successful rate among all search engines in Canada.  According to hitwise.com, the meaning of “successful rate” in search engines, as “one where the consumer leaves the search engine after performing a search.”  In other word, this also means the opposite of percentage of “exit rate.”   The exit rate is equal to 100% - “successful rate.”  Lower exit rate translates to as users are more loyal and spend extensive time to the site than higher exit rate.

As per hitwise.com data, Bing success rate is now at 78.74%.  It then followed by Yahoo at 77.45%.  Meanwhile, Google’s (.ca extension) success rate is 72.61%, compared to Google (.com extension) success rate is 67.69%.

  

(chart: hitwise.com)

Googling “Bing” trends

As Bing decision engine is celebrating its three months old, we look into Google trends data which according to the site “provides insights into broad search patterns.”   Amazingly, we found few trends that may not fit into “Bing” character.

Google Trends Rank:

(a) Regions: search term “Bing” ranks number three in America.  The keyword search for “Bing” is more popular in Singapore and Australia than in America.

(b) Cities: in term of city (location) that searching for keyword “Bing,” Seattle (WA) is currently at number two.  This is due to the Bing's parent (Microsoft) headquarter which is located near Seattle.

(c) Languages: keyword search for “Bing” is very popular for Internet users who speak “Indonesian.”   It’s hard to believe if this Google trend makes sense at all.

Bing “beta” site in Indonesia

Bing search market share grew just a little bit in America

 

The latest StatCounter, as reported by reuters.com, shows Bing grew just a little bit in America search market share, from 9.41% in July to 9.64% in August (an increase of 0.23%).  While Google search market share in America grew from 77.54% in July to 77.83% in August (an increase of 0.29%). 

The current StatCounter data with over three million websites was collected during the month of July and August.  The data was based on web traffic trends from 1.073 billion search engine referring clicks.  Of those, 272 million (25.35%) were from America users.