Posts About ‘Bing’

State of Search radioshow – episode 20: Bing’s missing chances, Google analytics bombing and more

A show this week where Bas and Roy touched different subjects of search and social. Roy’s brand new iPad was part of the discussion which went on to Bing issues: the Microsoft search engine is missing opportunities in Europe. Also questions from the chatroom, for example about what url to pick, were answered. Finally a flaw in Google Analytics was discussed, which gives those who have a bad karma the chance to ‘bomb’ someone they don’t like within Google Analytics.

The shownotes are below. (more…)

Battle of the World Cup SERPs

The World Cup, the biggest sports event on the planet, is underway! And because I’ve always wanted to do a sports-themed blog post, I’ve compared the “world cup” SERPs for five different search engines to see what information they present and how.

Google

When you search for ‘world cup’ in Google, the top of the SERP consists of the results of the last few matches played, and an overview of the upcoming matches.

The matches played have links pointing to recap articles on the FIFA site. Below this list there are links to the FIFA.com homepage, the World Cup schedule, current standings and the overview of the England team – Google after all knows where I am, never mind that England is not the UK and the Northern Irish don’t have any particular reason to cheer for the England squad. But we’ve all come to understand that American search companies have great difficulty coming to grips with the intricacies of European nationalities and cultures. (more…)

All flights cancelled because of volcano: how can you help?

Europe has been ‘hit’ with a natural disaster this week. In Iceland a volcano burst leaving not only about 700 people homeless, it also left people stranded all over Europe with flights being canceled all over the continent.

As you can expect this event has been discussed all over the Internet. Several websites are down, others (like the Schiphol airport) have put up a plain html page because they can’t handle the traffic. A lot of activity on the web, all for a sad reason. The information people are looking for is also very difficult to filter and to find out the right answers to your questions. A quick look around the web also showed that not many are actually using the situation for their own benefit. Is it because its not ‘decent’? Or are many out there just not paying attention?

Lets take a look at a few opportunities which you have to gain from the situation and how you can help those looking to go home at the same time. (more…)

“You won’t win it with a single website anymore, you just won’t” – Search: where to next panel

How could we miss a session which is on the track “State of Search” and called “Search: where to next?”. We can’t off course, so we sat down to watch this session which has Bing and Yahoo in it doing a presentation and a discussion with the panel.

The panel consists of: Stefan Weitz, Director, Bing, Brett Tabke, CEO, WebmasterWorld.com, Robert Murray, CEO, iProspect, Larry Cornett, VP, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search. (more…)

SEO and the Multi-layered Search Experience

There is a pervasive mindset in the internet community that search engines such as Google are an entirely different class of website. Instead of a destination in and of themselves, search engines are seen as gateways to real content. The search experience as many search engine optimisers define it is limited to what users do in Google, Bing, and such.

However, I’d argue that this is a limited perspective that no longer accurately reflects how users find content on the web. Instead I would call Google and its rivals first tier search engines – the first step in a multi-layered search experience.

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Will Bings TV campaign make an impact on search market share?

Microsoft announced on Monday that they are to launch a multi-million pound TV campaign for Bing to challenge Google’s dominance within the UK. The first ad is now available on Youtube.

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The opportunity for Bing

Steve Ballmer recently said that their approach is to “take a little here and there” from the search giant but they are clearly taking the UK market very seriously indeed. Who can blame them, the UK is the only country in the world where online ad spend exceeds TV and with 60% of that currently being spent on paid search the opportunity is immense. (more…)

The Real Time Hype: take it or leave it?

Search is changing rapidly. Search Engines are looking at user intent and what users want. And speed is one thing which users want badly. Get information as fast as you possibly can. It doesn’t matter if its not accurate or if its ‘only’ written in 140 characters, as long as its fast.

The need for speed makes that new tools are developed which makes information go around the web, and with that the world, faster by the second. Status updates on Twitter and Facebook off course are the best examples of content going around the web in split seconds. A continuos conversation. But what can we do with that information? Do we really care? (more…)

Why Bartz Won’t Sell Yahoo! (Just Yet)

Microsoft want Yahoo! Search… All of it.

It is no secret that Microsoft wants this business, and those who have been in the industry will recall previous attempts, most significantly the shennanigans of 2008, which saw an unsolicited proposal to buy the whole Yahoo! business in February of that year, for $44.6 BN dollars in cash and shares. Following the rejection and counter-position of the offer from Yahoo! to $53 BN, (equivanlent to $33 a share and almost double the then shareprice) Steve Ballmer, in a letter to Jerry Yang, announced Microsoft were pulling out of the offer and would not be willing to meet the asking price.

Later that year an opportunist alliance between activist investor Carl Icann and Microsoft, saw yet another unsolicited bid; this time for the search business only, under the terms that Icahn would depose the board of directors for the remaining Yahoo! business and install a new board of directors under his leadership. Chairman Roy Bostock issued a statement resoundly rejecting the proposal (which was issued with a 24 hour response deadline) on grounds that a carve-up of the business would be damaging and undervalued the company’s assests. Again the “buy the whole company for $33 dollars a share or get lost” message was loud and clear. (more…)

Bing in 2010

Google has nothing short of a strangle-hold on the search engine marketplace. In the UK for example, the last few months has seen Google market share at around 90%, with Yahoo! and Bing around 3 – 4% each; with the remainder composed of Ask and “other.”

Despite these percentages many search professionals agree that even when rankings are fairly stable across each search engine, it seems like Google drives way more traffic pro-rata, than its competitors. With the sheer volume of traffic coming from Google, it is usually more rewarding to spend all your efforts pushing a page two-listing up a place, rather than getting to the top spot on Bing. (more…)

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