Bing recently released a new feature to its search engine called Adaptive Search. This new technology is based on a user’s search history and is designed to make search results more personal.
Stefan Weitz, a director with Bing, told us that personalized search and search should not actually be classified separately. He believes that personalized search should be how search is thought of moving forward. He went on to say that Bing thinks this feature will continue to improve the overall user experience.
Adaptive Search is already being rolled out the U.S.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Sep 19th, 2011. 
In spite of the innovations and features that Bing has brought to search, it appears to be struggling on the paid search front. WebProNews spoke recently with Mark Ballard, the Senior Analyst at the Rimm-Kaufman Group who said that the company needed to ramp up its platform for advertisers.
Microsoft and Yahoo partnered in a search alliance 2 years ago in an effort to better compete with Google. However, neither company has shown a tremendous amount of improvement.
Ballard told us that he was pulling for Bing but that it needed to make some changes to better meet advertisers needs.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Aug 4th, 2011.
I have had several discussions over the past few weeks with Stefan Weitz, director of search for Bing, and Andy Chu, director of product management, Bing for mobile, about some pretty cool things on the horizon for Bing. We can’t say any more than that now, but it will be fun to follow. My conversations have been eye-opening to say the least and, as a result, I think that Bing could actually put a dent in what they refer to as “the Google habit.”
As I bet Stefan would attest, I am a bit opinionated about this whole local Internet space. So rather than grouse about it, I am going to outline my thoughts on just how Bing could make some serious progress in the search space. So, here goes.
Background
Google is the dominant player in the search space and they have been for more than a decade now. We know what they can do (automate everything and get a finger in every pie you can imagine) and what they can’t do (marketing—unless you are in Portland, OR—and customer service). They have jumped out to a ridiculous lead in the mobile search space (97 or so percent market share) and they are working to put the SMB, local Internet marketing space together with their mix of Google Place Pages, Hotpot, and Latitude.
All that being said, they appear to be doing this the way Google always does things. They are putting their head down, plowing forward, listening very little to the end user, and just assuming that because they are who they are, that the SMB will “get it.” I think they are wrong and that’s where Bing can get some serious traction.
Bing’s Opportunity
In simple terms, Bing’s opportunity exists in becoming the anti-Google. My discussions with Weitz and Chu show that there is considerable promise on the product side of Bing.
They have adopted a partner mentality in order to get a lot of their search results to reflect more in-depth information. They have partnered with Kayak for travel and with FanSnap for sports events and ticket information. According to Weitz, 30% of Bing searches now deliver information that is outside the “blue text link” result that many of us have grown so accustomed to.
There is also the obvious social side of the coin as well, because Bing actually appears to have a better connection to the social graph for search results through their investment in Facebook and the resulting relationship. Now, don’t get me wrong, that relationship seems to be far from perfect, but it’s better than where Google is in the social arms race.
Overall, Bing is positioned to make a dent in Google. I am being realistic in that I don’t think they will ever overtake Google, but they can make serious inroads in search and mobile.
How Would They Do It?
Here is the where the rubber meets the road and I wonder if Bing has the chops or even the nerve to do what is necessary to really make an impact in the world of search, especially at the critical SMB level. My recommendations are written as if I were speaking to Bing directly.
If you are going to lose money, lose it doing something that will move the needle. Microsoft’s online efforts are a tremendous drag on overall profits for the company because it loses money hand over fist. This is done because they know they have an uphill battle AND it is one that is worth fighting. It can’t stay that way forever, though.
Spending $ 100 million on a general branding campaign is a good start but it’s not where the win occurs. The win occurs when you sit across the desk from the SMBs of the world, shake their hands, and find out what they need. The win comes when you educate the SMBs about the Internet space as a whole. The win comes when you help them person to person.
So spend the money you have wisely by investing in the human side of the Internet. Hire people to be city managers. Give them a more than fair wage plus the chance to earn commission based on reasonable metrics like number of verified business accounts in the portal and other things. Let them earn the right to hire more sales people and be entrepreneurial in their market but with the backing of a Goliath like Microsoft.
Invest in people to take the message to the street level and to evangelize. Now you are acting like the anti-Google, and you are doing something different that impacts actual human beings. People like being treated like real flesh-and-blood and not some algorithmic function.
Oh, and on a very simple note: There should be a “Find Us on Bing” sticker in every storefront of every business in the country. Now that’s advertising, but it can only happen through relationships, which take people and a lot of money and hard work. You’ve got the money now, so spend it wisely on those who can do the hard work. Be the anti-Google who uses people and not the algorithm to change the marketplace.
Invest in more people who do actual live customer support. What if Bing could tell the human story of hiring hundreds of dedicated customer service representatives who are well-trained and fairly paid. No minimum wage phone picker-uppers. Hire just-out-of-school business degree-holders who are interested in this stuff, and let them show you what they’ve got.
This story could be incredible. While still in the stifling grip of a recession and the supposed “jobless recovery,” what if Microsoft advertised that they were hiring people in the United States whose sole purpose was to talk to the heart of the real economy—Main Street, USA—about getting their businesses in shape to do the right kind of business online? It’s PR gold, and oh by the way, it would work to get real business, not just a happy face story.
For the foreseeable future, there are enough older business owners who do not see the world of communication as a digital-only process. This is going to be the case for at least 20 more years. In that time, this group will age out and give way to the younger generation who is comfortable with the interactive way of life.
In the meantime, business will get done and many of this older (dare I say forgotten) crowd are the ones with established businesses and the financial wherewithal to have endured storms and to understand where and when to spend precious resources.
If Bing would help this group move forward, that would go a LONG way to breaking the Google habit and creating more opportunity for all involved.
Stop worrying about what Google is doing. Being the anti-Google will require something that is different than Google and not mere mimicry. Right now, Bing is doing a good job delivering search results with actionable options. This already trumps much of the Google search experience, but not enough people know about it.
Google won’t be stopped, but they can be “right-sized.” This is strange for me because honestly, I love Google. As a small business person myself, they do a lot for me, from e-mail and Google Docs to so much more. I am not interested in seeing them fall and become nothing. Quite the contrary. I believe that all ships rise with a rising tide, but right now, though, Google has not been challenged enough in the search game to stay sharp. That’s where Bing has a chance to improve the online space for everyone.
Bing has to step up and become a serious threat to Google, so that the Internet as a whole can improve. All these other search engine wannabes like Blekko and Wolfram Alpha all want to make the world safe from bad searches, but they don’t have the resources that Bing has. That will be limit their success. And Yahoo? Let’s just say that Bing needs to lead this race, and if Yahoo gets a lift, so be it. But don’t expect it.
I realize that this is a bit long and it is a bit heavy-handed but it’s time. There is so much more to be examined in this scenario, but I think that if Bing would take the opportunity to be the anti-Google that there is “gold in them thar hills!” And honestly, if Bing started making money in search, I bet we would all start making more money because that means there is competition and options and hope.
Do I think Bing can be the anti-Google? I think they certainly have the potential, but my question is do they have the guts? Time will tell and I hope this gets very interesting, very quickly because if not, we could find ourselves stuck in a Google habit that will work but could be so much better if there were company (or better yet A company) to make us all get better.
Your thoughts?
Originally published on Biznology
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Filed under Internet Marketing by on Apr 2nd, 2011.
Updated – See below.
AdAge published an article that sent ripples throughout the blogosphere with some questionable information. While not the basis of the article (that was mainly about how Facebook has become a dominant force in advertising), the article suggested that "the third-biggest advertiser [on Facebook] was a completely unknown brand called Make-My-Baby.com, citing "ComScore’s third-quarter analysis."
As more information has surfaced throughout the day, we’ve learned that comScore claimed (in an email to Danny Sullivan) that "Make-my-baby was not one of the top advertisers on Facebook." It remains unclear whether comScore was just initially wrong and AdAge passed on the wrong info, or whether the inaccuracy started with AdAge.
Brandon McCormick, a spokesperson for Facebook itself, tells WebProNews, "Not only is make-my-baby.com not one of our largest advertisers, they are not an advertiser at all. In fact, their practices are against our ad policies and would be rejected as a result. This is true whether they tried to run ads with us or an affiliate did."
So let’s back up for a minute. The practices referred to, which are the practices that made this a compelling story from the get go, were that make-my-baby.com was forcing users to install a toolbar that switched their default search to Bing, as the site was apparently run by a company trying to capitalize on a Microsoft affiliate program.
Google’s Matt Cutts, who discovered the practice and wrote about it on Google Buzz last night, noted that he was quickly able to find additional sites that were doing the same thing. All of this led to us questioning how much of this was actually taking place, and whether it could be playing a role in Bing’s impressive growth. I think this is still a valid question, but there is a pretty big difference between such a site being one of the top advertisers on the world’s largest social network (with 1.75 billion impressions, as reported by AdAge), and not advertising on Facebook at all. That greatly changes things in terms of reach.
While it was never my intent to suggest that Bing owed its impressive growth entirely to sites like this, it seemed possible that it could at least be padded to some extent, and could still be even if to a much, much lesser extent.
Either way, the whole thing appears to have worked out for the best, as a Microsoft spokesperson told us, "Distribution deals and affiliate programs are an important part of how all search engines introduce their product to customers. That said, we have been made aware of some practices from a specific publisher that are not compliant with the guidelines, best practices and principles put in place by Bing. As a result, the relationship with this publisher will be terminated."
So, for now, the mystery remains how AdAge came up with the idea that make-my-baby.com was the third largest advertiser on Facebook, if ComScore, the alleged source has denied the information. The original AdAge article has yet to be updated as of the time of this writing. We’ll update further as more info comes to light.
Update: Sullivan was sent a copy of the comScore report by AdAge. Apparently the confusion stemmed from make-my-baby.com being listed as the third largest adertiser in social networking, based on comScore’s information – a category, which was comprised of Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites). So while the site may not have been a big advertiser on Facebook, it would appear that it was still a big social media advertiser – and still a problem.
Filed under Internet Technology by on Jan 19th, 2011.
Search and social go well together, and the search engines are finding more and more ways to use them together. In fact, the right combinations of these two elements could eventually dictate who has the most useful tools for users.
It’s become more and more clear over time that having a strong social presence is helpful in building a strong search presence for a variety of reasons, but it’s not been so clear, just how the search engines have looked at things like Twitter and Facebook profiles when it comes to organic search ranking.
Should social media be considered in search ranking? Tell us what you think.
Search Engine Land Chief Danny Sullivan posted an important article about this very topic, with some rare and surprisingly direct answers from both Google and Bing. While, neither exactly gave away their respective secret sauces, it would appear that they have set some things straight.
Google reportedly uses when an article is retweeted or referenced in Twitter as a signal in organic and news rankings (even though links on Twitter are nofollowed). They also use it to enhance the news universal results (based on how many people share an article).
Google "computes and uses author quality" for when someone tweets. When Sullivan asked if they calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on who tweets it, Google Responded, "Yes we do use this as a signal, especially in the ‘Top links’ section [of Google Realtime Search]. Author authority is independent of PageRank, but it is currently only used in limited situations in ordinary web search."
Google says it treats links shared on Facebook Fan pages the same way as tweeted links, but they have no personal Facebook wall data. Authority for Facebook Pages is also treated like Twitter.
So, the more authoritative the crowd sharing links to your content, the better. Not that different than PageRank.
Bing
When it comes to Twitter, Bing tells Sullivan it also looks at social authority of users and more specifically, looks at how many people they follow and how many follow them, adding that this can add "a little weight" to a listing in regular search results (though it carries more in Bing’s separate Social Search). Bing decides when links should carry more weight based on the person who tweets it.
As far as Facebook, Bing currently looks at links shared on Facebook that are marked as being shared to "everyone" and those from Fan Pages. "We can tell if something is of quality on Facbook by leveraging Twitter," as Sullivan paraphrases Bing’s response. "If the same link is shared in both places, it’s more likely to be legitimate."
Bing does not use its new Facebook data in ordinary web search…yet.
On a related note, Bing is finding other interesting ways to utilize Facebook with search.
So, clearly it pays to tweet and build a credible Twitter presence. This means gaining a significant following in number, but also getting authoritative users to follow you (and hopefully retweet your links). This would appear to be good for plain old fashioned organic rankings as well as other supplemental search results. More importantly, it pays to create good content that will attract authoritative Twitterers to share it with others.
These things of course pay anyway, but it’s nice to know that they actually do have an effect on search rankings as well.
It’s not surprising that Twitter is currently playing a more important role in to search engine ranking than Facebook, simply because Twitter is public by default. Facebook is much more walled, meaning that most of the good Facebook data is private. Though it will be interesting to see what happens when Bing does integrate its newly acquired Facebook into its regular search offerings.
This wall of Facebook’s is also a factor into why Facebook could potentially unleash its own legitimate search engine. It’s got a search feature now of course, but there is a great deal of potential for them to do a whole lot more and really get under Google’s skin. More on that here.
Sullivan provides more background and context around the search engines’ social signals, as well as the full with both Bing and Google, and details about the Twitter Firehose’s lack of nofollow.
With the information Sullivan has gotten out of Google and Bing, will you focus more on social media? Comment here.
Filed under Social Media by on Dec 3rd, 2010.
