Posts Tagged "bing"

As high speed internet continues to penetrate other countries, many U.S. companies are now focusing their efforts on this world wide market. Google’s India site is now the twelfth most popular site in the world, and Baidu.com, a search engine in China, is even better at number nine. Companies can see huge sale increases from people buying their products from all over the world. Problems are created, for internet marketers, like TK, as people from various countries search quite differently.

Andy Atkins-Krüger explains some of these differences and there importance to SEO experts, in a Sept. 23, 2009 article, “Do Accents Really Matter in International SEO?” . He points out that in German and French searches many words require “diatrics”, the little accent marks above or below some words. International search engines treat these words differently. Some ignore them all together, but most have to take them into account as many will actually change the meaning of the query. Also, many searchers will not use the required diatrics in their search words, creating some often missed opportunities for marketers. Many marketers will make the mistake of ignoring the diatric, or ignoring the word without the diatric, hence, missing out on placing their website in front of potential clients.

The author is now hiring employees from diverse backgrounds, or educating current employees on international search trends, so these opportunities are not missed. TK sees the same trend of international search engine marketing increasing over time, and will now consider the cultural background and linguistic ability of the next person we hire. Many of our current clients are already starting to request more international search engine optimization, and these are rather small companies. They see the potential of worldwide customers, and as a business owner, increasing my knowledge of the online searching trends will become increasingly important.

Several clients, recently, have specifically asked about the many factors that go into helping a website show up higher is search engines. Particularly, on-page factors. The best resource I’ve found in a long time is SEOmoz’s Search Engine Ranking Factors resource.

One of the reasons this resource is so helpful, is that it’s from a survey they do of SEO professionals. So, you get a true view of SEO…simply a bunch of smart people trying to reverse engineer Google and other search engines. So many of these SEO’s have differing opinions, that it’s nice to get a collection of all of them in one single summary. It helps one understand that many techniques that SEO’s go on and on about are simply their opinion…rather than a hard and fast rule. So, looking over the survey results, one can take what ‘most’ seo’s think, and generally bank on the ones that they all agree on.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

A few days ago we posted about Bing going visual with their visual search, well Google is getting into the game as well. CNN posts a nice video that gives you a sample.

I like the direction this leads. The more visual search becomes, even more people will use it. Search engine marketing will just continue to grow in importance and complexity…but with it, will be a more enjoyable, effective experience for the end user.

We at TK have long mused wither Facebook would ever really try and get into the search business. Imagine, if you will, doing a search on FB for a local plumber and getting web results that integrate with your friends from FB. It could deliver results that had your friends searches and input as a display factor. So, if 10 of your friends had clicked on Action Plumbing and given it a thumbs up (or Google’s Digg like placement button) then it will show up more prevalently on your Facebook search. That way, your friends kinda recommend what you see as search results…helping you make decisions based off their digital recommendations.  Phew!

Well, if that scenario where to play out…the beginning steps may have been taken.

Facebook is now showing Bing results at the bottom of each search (has been for awhile, I know), beneath their stuff. Does it mean Facebook and Bing and going aggressively after Google (Bing already is)…well, not necessarily as we’ve described above. But it could be the start…we’re just saying…

Bing continues it’s steady and healthy adoption rate. It has just improved to over 10% by itself. If you include it with Yahoo, it’s recent search partner, it has over 26% of the total market share. Google is still the strong leader with over 64%, but the competition and with Bing bringing on cool new features like their recent Visual Search, it’s getting a little more interesting.

Top 10 Search Providers for August 2009, Ranked by Searches (U.S.)
+------------------------------+-------------+----------+------------+
| Provider                     |  Searches   | M-O-M %  |  Share of  |
|                              |    (000)    |  Growth  |  Searches  |
+------------------------------+-------------+----------+------------+
| Total                        | 10,812,734  |   2.9%   |   100.0%   |
| Google Search                |  6,986,580  |   2.6%   |   64.6%    |
| Yahoo! Search                |  1,726,060  |  -4.2%   |   16.0%    |
| MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search |  1,156,415  |  22.1%   |   10.7%    |
| AOL Search                   |   333,231   |   1.8%   |    3.1%    |
| Ask.com Search               |   186,270   |   2.9%   |    1.7%    |
| My Web Search                |   128,432   |   0.5%   |    1.2%    |
| Comcast Search               |   50,328    |  -21.6%  |    0.5%    |
| Yellow Pages Search          |   37,923    |   2.7%   |    0.4%    |
| NexTag Search                |   31,830    |   0.4%   |    0.3%    |
| Local.com Search             |   16,314    |   2.9%   |    0.2%    |
+------------------------------+-------------+----------+------------+
Source: Nielsen MegaView Search

Bing is bringing in the cool features with their new Beta of Visual Search. As one who is always looking for the next best thing on the horizon, this may have some potential.

Essentially, you start your search with a page that shows you the main categories, hot topics, ect.

You can start with one of the pictures on display or use the category menu on the left. For instance, if you click on ‘Shopping’ (one of the sections that will really benefit from this, IMHO) you see a display of shopping categories. Click on ‘Books’ and you are shown a really cool display (cover-flow style, almost) that you can scroll through.

With lots of additional features, I’m excited to see if the new look and feel will catch on. I think with new internet adopters, they will be pleased with the clean, futuristic feel of search. Those that have been using Google for a long time will probably find it cumbersome and ‘trinket’ feeling. Either way, I’m excited for the different approach and hopes it gets Google thinking about better ways to display their results.

I know, lately our blog is starting to look like the SEOmoz love festival. But, I do love those guys and festivals are fun…but I digress…

Microsites don’t pass the link juice onto your main site like you may think. Instead, integrate your blog or microsite into your main site, and get all the links, with their diversity, etc. into you main site. Helps for the short and long run. Rand walks us through it. Take a look:

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – The Microsite Mistake from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Much has been said about long tail searches, and the video below illustrates how important these unique, less searched phrases can be to your site traffic. It is critical that you pay some attention to them as an SEO. Sometimes as much as 75% of your overall site traffic can be attributed to the long tail phrases.

So, what is a longtail phrase? Basically, it is a search phrase that is longer and more specific, for example:

Cowboy boots= short phrase, with huge search volume (currently TK has a client ranking on the first page for this hot phrase )

Care for rattle snake skin cowboy boot= long phrase, less search volume

Add up a bunch of these long tail phrases, and you often get significant search volume.

Reading about Bing’s new Bing & Ping feature, I had one of those ‘duh, why didn’t they think of this earlier?’ moments. But, then again, I didn’t think of it either.

What is Bing & Ping? Simply, the addition of Twitter and Facebook sharing icons beneath all (or at least most) search results that allow a searcher to quickly redistribute a search result. Just like you see at the bottom of this post, and most well made blogs.  It will look like this:

I like it. Obviously, bookmarking sites will be begging to be included as well. Facebook and Twitter seem to be the only social sites that have survived the markets test of longevity (relative here), buzz (both get tons), and user adoption (the obvious winners so far).  Bing can hence, confidently add these two icons to their search. I can see both Delicious and StumbleUpon making their case to Bing- claiming to be the winner in their social space.  Maybe when we have a declared winner, Bing will expand their share buttons.

I predict this is just the beginning of the blend between search and social sites- stay tuned, they will blend more and more, I’m convinced.  In the meantime, we’ll wait for the official launch of Bing & Ping.

Follow Microsoft’s Bing & Ping updates.

Much has been written about the comparisons between Google, Yahoo and Bing. Many feel that Google still reigns supreme as far as quality search results. Others counter that Google benefits from their brand in this debate, and with a blind test, they argue, Bing competes very well. So, instead of giving our opinion, we leave it to you. Try going to this search engine blind test and see for yourself.

You will find:

1. – Simple search box
2. – Results displayed in three columns
3. – Each column represents Yahoo, Google or Bing, but all branding is hidden
4. – A button that allows you to vote for the best results for your search
5. – Branding is then displayed

Do a dozen searches or so and see what engine actually provides you the best results.