Posts About ‘Bing’

We’re tired of Google, it’s time for a change

Google-toilet-paper

Let’s face it: Google rules search. With a market share in most European countries of well over 90%, Google is as close to a search engine monopoly as you can get.

When it comes to potential threats of Google’s dominance, everyone seems to be looking towards Bing. This seems perfectly logical, as Bing is a product of one of the world’s biggest and most experienced technology companies. If anyone can threaten the dominance of Google, surely it’s the financial and technological might of Microsoft?

Maybe so. But I don’t agree with that. Sure, Bing has some great search properties. Their image search is very solid, their maps are great, and I quite fancy their Visual Search system. (more…)

Predictions for 2010, how did we do?

2010-predictions

First of all: Happy New Year! I hope 2011 will be the best year we have all ever seen.

2011 has started. It’s the first Monday of the New Year and many of us are starting the New Year fresh with good resolutions. And a new year also means you can get yourself (mentally) ready for a lot, and I mean a lot, posts on almost every site predicting the future of search and social in 2011. After all, every self-respecting blog is making these predictions.

Why? Well for one because its ‘easy’ content, secondly it might be a link worthy article (I’m linking to many of them in this post) and third, it’s always fun to look into a Crystal Ball and predict the future.

The thing is with these posts, hardly anyone dares to look at them again 12 months after they were published. How did we do in the predictions? Did we really have an idea of what was going to happen? Or did the industry caught us by surprise? Time to take a look. Note: I can’t talk about every prediction made out there, there were too many, but I collected some interesting ones. (more…)

What Bing needs to bring to the table in 2011

Last monday I had an interesting discussion on Twitter with Paul van Oosterhout and Bart Schuijt about Bing. We were discussing what Bing would need to become a good alternative for Google. We had some ideas ourselves but I decided to involve a few more people on this question. So I started asking people “What does Bing (primarily) need to do in 2011 to become a major competitor for Google?”

Back to the basics

The first response I got from many people was that Bing needs to get better basic results. Although Bing has many great verticals, many of them even better than Google’s, search starts with the basics. When the basic results aren’t satisfying chances are people aren’t going to use the verticals either. They’ll probably just return to Google, no matter how great the verticals are. Maybe they will use the verticals sporadically but people are animals of habit and mostly will stick to one search engine for all their needs. (more…)

Bing starts chase: updates on Maps, Local, Mobile, Travel, Image Search and Facebook

bing-android

If you live in or near San Francisco you can attend a lot of great conferences, gatherings or press events. One place I would have liked to have been this week was the Bing Search Summit.

At the Summit Bing presented a lot, and I mean a lot, of new features. This might be the actual start of the chase Bing is preparing towards Google.

One of the things Bing announced that Facebook likes will become more important in ranking but there are also changes announced on local, Maps, Mobile, Travel and Image Search. (more…)

Search and social: A match made in heaven?

Its not very often that search marketing makes the likes of the BBC news, however it was interesting to see the BBC website run a story this week stating the future of search is social.

The search engine landscape is such an interesting environment at this present moment in time for a number of reasons – for example:

  • New players in the market – We have seen the likes of Blekko launch to the public, as well as seen the continuing decline of perenial trier Ask.com
  • Changes to the search results pages themselves – such as Local results on Google or Google Instant
  • Increasing influence of personalisation
  • Increasing integration of social networks within the search results, i.e Facebook/Bing and Twitter/Google RTS

As such this has led to a hugely different landscape for search marketeers of which the vast majority of readers of this blog are. The continuing evolution of the engines not only affects marketeers, one can’t help thinking traditional users of the search engines have had a lot to take in over the course of the last 12 months – without the benefit of industry knowledge. (more…)

Facebook New Feature: The start of a Beautiful Friendship (Page)?

Facebook have released a new, slightly creepy feature, apparently around a week ago. I’m not sure if this is a phased roll-out, or if I’m just not watching closely enough, as I discovered this feature yesterday. Hang tight and I’ll take you on a little pedestrian journey through my social sphere and then we won’t be strangers any more.

Lunchtime – I see that my friend and fellow SEO Chicks and State of Search blogger Lisa Myers, has posted a new picture of baby Isla. I click on the picture and write my comment, then go to Lisa’s profile, to update myself on what she’s been up to in the past few days of maternity leave. That’s when I spotted this… (more…)

Bing integrates Facebook into their search: the next step in social search integration

It was clear that anytime soon something was going to happen between Bing and Facebook. Microsoft and Facebook already were working together on the search inside Facebook, but last night they announced a further cooperation. In the US (not in Europe yet!) Bing now uses Facebook “like” data to give you results from within your social circle on Facebook. Also they will be showing Facebook-powered people search results

The move is mainly important for Bing to get more attention for their search engine. They now have access to data which their biggest rivals Google don’t have. That makes that the step towards Bing might become easier for many users. The deal however won’t upset the search landscape just now, but it has potential. (more…)

The Definitive Guide to Image Search Optimisation

Last week Jeroen van Eck and Bill Slawski lamented the lack of a solid guide to image search optimisation. Bill threw down the gauntlet, and I picked it up. Here’s my Definitive Guide to Image Search Optimisation.

Image SearchFirst, what do we mean with image search? Simply put it’s the vertical search option that allows you to search for images on the web. Google has an image search, and so does Bing, and there are several other specialised image search engines around.

For the purpose of this blog post we’ll focus on Google’s image search, though I reckon most of what follows can also be applied to other image search engines.
(more…)

(Bada) Bing has done it again: Street Slide in Bing Maps, amazing

I’ve spoken before, and expressed my admiration with it, about Bing Maps and what they are doing. The use of Streetside in Bing was a huge step forward for Bing Maps in the competition with Google Streetview. And while Google is fighting law suits with Streetview Microsoft simply continues to develop their maps functionality.

At Siggraph 2010 Microsoft presented yet another add on to Bing Maps which has a high “WOW” factor: Street Slide. Together with Bing Streetside and an updated and improved Photosynth navigation (with new Ambient Point Clouds for View Interpolation to improve the transitions effect, see video at the end of this post) Microsoft is really making a huge step here. Check out this video:

So what makes this so special?

Streetview is nice, Streetside was already a bit nicer, why is this so special then? Well, its a number of things. When you’ve seen the video you’ll know already but just to highlight a few things which make this a very special Map application:
(more…)

Page 6 of 71234567