Posts About ‘Bing’

Bing – still life in the old dog yet?

The battle for search engine supremacy appears to be hotting up. No sooner have we seen the launch of Google+ than Bing announce a potentially huge deal with Baidu to power the English based searches. With the current Search Alliance running behind schedule (in the UK at least), Google must have been rubbing their hands at the thought of taking a further lead on their rivals however it appears that we are potentially seeing the sting in the tail, with Bing announcing a number of deals in recent months which could see them take a considerable step forward.

Its no secret that Google see Facebook as as big a competitor as they do Bing. Facebook certainly have the potential, they certainly have the audience – at the moment they dont have the where with all. Likewise, Bing have the where with all, unfortunately we often fail to see the innovation and speed of thought of Google. Whether this is simply down to culture is open to debate – certainly Google still have much of the dotcom speed of movement to them which Microsoft/Bing don’t however I can’t help thinking Bing are quietly working behind the scenese and we may just may get to the point where they actually have something special. (more…)

Schema.org – What does it really mean for us

Its now been just over a week since the three major search engines announced a unified approach to “create and support a common vocabulary for structured data markup on web pages”. The announcement made almost simultaneously by Google, Bing and Yahoo is in simple language a way of standardising markup – such as microformats – for any party wishing to utilise the schema.org framework. According to the official schema.org site the requirement for a new schema was bourne out of three main issues

Webmasters – Schema.org provides a single resource for webmasters to go to rather than the existing fragmented approach.
Search Engines – Provides a centralised structured approach required in order to ‘improve search’. In real terms – pages can be interpreted as required with no potential for misintepretaton’
Users – With structured data – users will have a better experience from services such as search engines. We have already seen evidence of this via Googles Microformats adoption however further takeup of schemas.org should see this translate across multiple engines. (more…)

SEO for Google vs Bing: How Different are They?

This post is part of our coverage of SMX Advanced London 2011. It is a panel discussing the differences between Google and Bing and how or if we should be optimizing for these differently.

In this post we will describe the talks from Gill Reich, VP of Product Management, at Answers.com and Daniel Ruby, Research Director at Chitika. They took an in depth look at the differences between the search engines.

Demographics

Firstly some basic demographics:

- The biggest difference between the browsers: 87% of Bing users come from IE vs 47% of Google users from IE

- Users of Bing predominately come from the US - 83% vs just under 50% for Google

- Top cities are all US for Bing vs Google where only NYC is the only American city in its top 10 traffic-generating cities.

Bing’s Growth

Yahoo! and Bing are potentially monetising better than Google and seeing significant growth. This double combination is enough to warrant a second look. Users of Bing are generally less tech savvy therefore generate a greater value per impression, this is worth taking into account.

There are varying views on how well/poorly Bing/Yahoo! will do over thecoming months. Some (Mashable apparently) say that at this rate, Bing could potentially surpass Google within the next year.

Sounds more than a little optimistic to me. Others (Henry Blodget) suggest that the traffic acquisition costs are more than three times their revenue as they try to hit scale.

Bing is buying their traffic at the moment, hoping this will pay off in the long run. Whether it will or not remains to be seen.

Portals and Platforms

Take the MSN homepage as an example– not only is there a search box that points to Bing but it also includes footer links and sidebar links that point to search results on Bing.

Looking at upstream traffic to Bing – 21% comes from MSN whereas Google has a wider variety of sources including 17% Facebook followed by YouTube etc.

Bing SERPs are clearly centred around their own properties – e.g. above the fold predominately centred around links back to MSN pages. Google is much more open, it powers the entire web. E.g. Adsense = a large chunk of pages on web are advertising Google and monetising large amount of the web.

Bing is focusing on being a portal. Google a platform.

How Gill came to Understand Search Engines’ Importance

Search engines were previously always used to help you find websites. Now search engines, particularly Google, is how you find information. Often you barely even know you are on another site. This makes it very difficult for webmasters.

People no longer think of search engines as a way to find a website with an answer, they see it as a direct means to an end.

Summary of the talk by Gill Reich

Users are different (Country, browser)
Searches are different (context, number of words)
Engines are different (technology & business models)

Bing has got significantly better but Google’s technology is still in a league of its own. This sets it apart.

A more in-depth look at Bing

Daniel Ruby, Research Director at Chitika.

Why should I care about Bing?

Volume

Yahoo/Bing has become the first volume related competitor to Google in years. Based on traffic generated by search engines – even though Bing serves much more as a portal, it does still drive traffic. 15-18% for Chitika.

Value per impression

Both Yahoo! and Bing users are more likely to click on an ad, so they’re worth more as monetisation tool.

What affects my Bing Postioning?

By and large, it’s similar to Google – content, links etc.

The differences between Bing and Google?

1. Bing does not like forums, 90% of forum results show up further down Bing results than Google results.

Many forum results that Google positions on the front page don’t appear in Bing’s top 100.

2. Bing does not like content farms

Even post-Panda, Bing tends to rank low quality content sites lower than Google positions.

3. Bing is significantly worse than Google at broad matching keywords such as 401k – Retirement Plan

Verbatim keyword matching is much more important for Bing traffic. Be more verbatim in your keyword strategy for Bing, don’t expect it to understand synonyms and context as well as Google does.

4. URL results are ineffective

If a user searches for a url, Google will assume that the user is looking for information on the url and will also show results with that URL as keyword

5. Bing is more likely to show related searches, sites that are similar to that original searched-on url

6. Phone number searches

Bing provides fewer results, assumes that if you don’t find the number you are looking for within the first couple of pages – there is no point in showing more ‘spammy’ types of results.

7. Ambiguous searches

If a search has multiple possible meanings, Bing will err of the side of local results whereas Google is more likely to err on the side of brand.

General observations

Bing more likely to censor ‘questionable’ content such as watching copyrighted tv shows online, finding free essays, cheats etc. It also seems to struggle with parsing PDF files compared with Google.

Summary of the talk by Daniel Ruby

- The number one long-tail results on Google will appear on Bing’s first page 67% of the time, Bing/Google have a lot of fractured results crossover.
- So do I need to focus on Bing? Yes, according to Daniel. And yes again.
- The traffic is growing and it is valuable.

Yandex

Someone who could be a competitor is Yandex. The session at SMX ended with a few words from Andy Atkins-Kruger on his experience of Yandex having visited Moscow and met its founder Ilya Segalovich recently.

Yandex is focusing increasingly on MLR (Machine-Learned Ranking), which some are suggesting is also the preferred route for Bing. Google uses this to a much lesser degree, favouring it only for the Adwords algorithms. This could lead to increased differences further down the line.

All in all, Bing is growing and isn’t about to go away. It can provide valuable new visitors that may not reach your site if you focus all of your efforts solely on Google. It’s worth taking the time to consider it.

(Thanks to Razorfish for the image!)

More posts about Bing vs Google that might interest you:

- Google or Bing: The Royal Wedding
- Searches on Bing More Successful than on Google
- The Bing and the Beautiful
- Bing keeps denying copying Google and accuses Google of clickfraud
- Osama Bin Laden killed: how did Google and Bing respond?
- Why Bing will be trailing on Google and why it should hook up with Apple and Facebook

Bing’s Photosynth View on the Royal Wedding: very nice

At State of Search we have decided to take a closer look at the differences between Bing and Google when it comes to current events. Yesterday we explored the differences on reporting the death of Osama Bin Laden and last week we looked at the Royal Wedding. One thing we didn’t really take into account is other services that both Google and Bing explore, like the special YouTube-channel Google had set up.

Microsoft (Bing’s boss so to speak) now releases something around the Royal Wedding using their service Photosynth, of which I am personally a big fan. The service, which also is used in Bing Maps for example, has gathered photo’s from the Royal Wedding and has placed them in a very nice interactive Photosynth set. The images were taken by the Press Association and putten together using Photosynth. OK, it is not search, but it is very nice to see and use. (more…)

State of Search top 10 posts for April 2011

There is a lot of great content being published on State of Search. You might not ‘catch’ them all. So here is an overview of the best read posts which were published in April 2011.

1. Behind the Code in the Hoxton Hotel’s £1 Sale – by Sam Crocker
2. Google puts your address in the SERPS, shows it to your social circle – by Bas van den Beld
3. Pouring Water on the Panda – UK Observations and Data Cautions Regarding Price Comparison – by Nichola Stott
4.The ultimate social media cheat sheet (infographic) – by Bas van den Beld
5. Link Building – Don’t Just Throw Mud Against a Wall – by Guest post by @paddymoogan)
6. Bing’s European boss Cedric Chambaz: “Search is a very personal experience” – by Bas van den Beld
7. Dark Patterns: how “Black Hat design” can influence behavior – by Bas van den Beld
8. More Lessons from The Hoxton Hotel’s £1 Sale – April 2011- by Sam Crocker
9. Linkdex review: a tool as your new SEO assistant – by Bas van den Beld
10. Day to day SEO for Content Producers: The Story of Karen Gillan’s Underwear – by Annabel Hodges

Follow our Twitteraccount and subscribe to our RSS Feed to stay up to date with all the latest articles on State of Search! (more…)

Osama Bin Laden killed: how did Google and Bing respond?

Last week I started with a series in which I am looking at the differences between Bing and Google: which one is actually better? After all, Bing seems to be doing well, although there are some doubts about that. I decided to take a look at the both of them based on current events. So “hot stuff” which anyone could be searching on. The question then is: which one of them handles the current affairs the best? Which one offers me the most relevant results and which one is the most user friendly?

Last week the first comparison was made based on the Royal Wedding. There Google seemed to win it based on the quality of the page in general, but Bing did a better job when it came to user friendliness. Today we can already look at another current event which shows differences between the two: this morning news broke that Osama Bin Laden was killed by US Forces. This off course immediately led to many reactions world wide. I took a look at how Google and Bing reacted. This time not with a video, but in text. (more…)

Google or Bing: The Royal Wedding – UPDATE

Since Bing is gaining market share in the US and a little in the UK and we are always complaining that we don’t have the ‘right’ Bing here in Europe I figured it was about time to take a closer look at the differences between the two. So I decided to put up my “user” hat and act as a user searching for current events and compare the two. In the coming weeks I will be trying to compare Google to Bing based on searches related to current events. That way I hope to get a real insight into what the real differences are between the two search engines. Today I made a video about the differences between Google and Bing when it comes to the Royal Wedding which takes place tomorrow in London. (more…)

State of Search radioshow – episode 51: Google and more with @nicholastott and @judithlewis

Bas and Roy were joined by State of Search blogger Nichola Stott and her fellow SEO-Chick Judith Lewis. Several different topics were discussed, from the Panda update, to how others look at SEO as being ‘closed’, while the SEO world in many cases is very open.

Also Google wifi issues in Holland, Google’s powerplant business, its revenues and even the royal wedding were discussed, a full show all together!

The shownotes are below. (more…)

Bing’s European boss Cedric Chambaz: “Search is a very personal experience”

It is about time we start to take Bing seriously. They’ve reached a market share of 30% in the US, are the only one growing in the UK and just got out of beta in France. Still many in Europe don’t consider them to be a grown up player in the market. Bing’s intent is to change that.

At the head of EMEA Marketing Lead – SMB Advertising for Microsoft Advertising Cedric Chambaz is working on just that. He spoke at the International Search Summit in Munich and will be speaking at SMX London (on the same panel as me by the way, so I am honored!) in May, which is combined with the London version of ISS. We had the opportunity to ask Cedric some questions about Bing, Europe and more. Find his answers below. (more…)

State of Search top 10 posts for March 2011

There is a lot of great content being published on State of Search. You might not ‘catch’ them all. So here is an overview of the best read posts which were published in March 2011.

1. SEO Forecasting: A Poor Allocation of Resource – by Sam Crocker
2. Bing vs Google: an eyetracking study: more staring at Google (and organic search beats paid) – by Bas van den Beld
3. 5 ways for a Local Businesses to grow their Twitter Followers and Business – by Sam Murray
4.Google admits to whitelisting sites: endangering their European legal issues? – by Bas van den Beld
5. The growth of mobile search: huge in numbers, not in CTR (research) – by Bas van den Beld
6. Why I’ve Stopped Defending SEO – by Barry Adams
7. Did Google’s algorithm change misfire? Mahalo fires 10% of staff – by Bas van den Beld
8. Developing Great Content Down on the Content Farm – by – by @gregjarboe
9. Majestic SEO now able to find fresh back links within 24 hours – by Bas van den Beld
10. Want to be taken seriously? Start by looking good – by Barry Adams