The Search Engine Blog
News and Tips From The Search Marketing World
Adaptive Search Remembers You
It’s following you and remembering where you’ve been. Bing is doing more to customize your search based on where it thinks you are, where you’ve been before and what you are searching. If you are logged into Bing, it will base it on up to 18 months of history. This does wreck havoc on marketers but may be beneficial to searchers. More on the Bing blog.
Social Media Very Important to Bing
Submit your site to Bing’s search engine? Know what is most important to them? 1. Content (duh) 2. Social Media (eh?) 3. Links. Social media is far more important than the links you have to your site. So Bing is using RSS feeds, has low tolerance with issues in sitemaps and considers user interaction with your site far more important than the links you have coming into your site. Summary: If you aren’t on Facebook, Twitter and the like and your competitors are, if likely that you aren’t going to do as well on Bing (other things being equal). More to read at StoneTemple. Is this a good time to mention that we offer Social Media Marketing?
Bing Webmaster Tools Update
Bing has updated their webmaster tools with some new features and an improved look. http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster/
Facebook and Bing Integration
Bing has been gradually adding Facebook data into their search. Now the integration has been stepped up to a whole new level. Bing results can now be personalized based on your Facebook profile, friends, likes, etc. Be careful when searching…if you are logged into Facebook while on Bing, your search results can be very different than if you aren’t connected to Facebook. Read more from Bing.
You Must Be Secure
A post on Microsoft’s help forum makes it clear that you must have a secure site in order to be listed in the Bing product search. This user had a chat feature that wasn’t secure. Even though the site tested secure, the chat feature caused the check to fail. Overall a very good feature as online shopping sites should have SSL properly configured before selling online.
Microsoft Ad Console Empty?
Log in to manage your campaign and what do you see? If you see nothing, don’t panic. You are not alone. This is one reason why we manage our customer accounts through a different interface. The Microsoft ad console is loaded with issues. I personally think a junior high student created it. More discussion here.
Bing Updates Mobile Search
If your phone has HTML5 capabilities, your Bing just got more Bling. Read and view more at Bing’s blog.
Who is King?
Google has been receiving a lot of criticism regarding the quality of searches. Yes, spam content sites have been an issue for months causing many to jump ship to Bing for research (including me). Google finally woke up and has released a few statements across the boards that they are beefing up their elimination of spammy sites. It’s long over due. They have been adding new features and providing some good tools, but temporarily forgot why they were in business. To Google we say, don’t forget your primary business…..delivery of quality content. To web site owners we say, don’t forget your primary business….creating quality content. Yes, content is still king.
Bing Brings Back Links
You’ll need Silverlight installed and you’ll have to verify your site first, but you can now see link reports in the Bing Webmaster Tool. Learn more in Bing’s forum.
Bing Update?
There is some speculation in the search forums that Bing had an update last night. I like it so far. All our sites that I’ve checked so far are doing the same or better.
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