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Search Engines Bring Out Thanksgiving Logos And Themes!

Navneet Kaushal — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 13:10:43 +0000

The festive season has kicked off with Thanksgiving, and search engine industry has launched their Thanksgiving logos and themes. Google went ahead and launched its doodle a few days ago. The rest of the engines- Yahoo!, Bing and Ask have also gone live with their logos.

A very happy Thanksgiving to all our readers from PageTraffic!

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Search Engines Bring Out Thanksgiving Logos And Themes!

Now Bing Search Results To Include Editors' Picks!

Navneet Kaushal — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 10:29:14 +0000

In an effort to make the users' search experience better, Bing has launched a new search feature called- Editors' Picks. This feature will furnish the users with a list of Editors' Picks for the searched query.

Do not think that the Editors' Picks will have any effect on the ranking or relevance of ordinary search results. The feature will have no impact on ranking at all, in fact, it will offer a different angle on search- those results will be featured that have been chosen by editors rather than any algorithm.

As Bing says, “We’re launching Bing Editors’ Picks. Editors’ Picks were designed to enhance Bing results by bringing editorially selected sites to your search experience. Our goal, whether delivered by algorithm or by editors, is to help you find what you’re looking for faster and to get stuff done.”

With the new feature, at present 140 topics have been chosen ranging from “Free E Books” to “Photo Editing.” Now searchers looking for any of the 140 topics will see a set of editorial picks and a new option at the top that links into the specially made page for the topic. The link will be in the top-rail and will read "editors' picks," in standard searches, while in the case of instant answers, it will show the entry at the top of the search page.

The editors' page has visual navigation and brief descriptions for the selected sites. As of now, there is no clarity on how the pages were selected by the editors.

This has led to speculations whether the editors won't favor any content (be it from Bing or advertisers). What do you think of this feature? Will editors do a better job than algorithms?

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Now Bing Search Results To Include Editors' Picks!

Bing Webmaster Tools Updated With New URL Normalization Tips And Crawl Details Expansion!

Navneet Kaushal — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 11:26:38 +0000

Bing has introduced a major upgrade in its Webmaster Tools, with the focal point of the update being more sharing of data. As Bing says, “Continuing our commitment to help publishers do more on Bing, today we’re announcing our biggest updates since Honey Badger, by focusing on three areas: To share more data, to increase transparency and to bring you more useful tools.”

Bing Webmaster Tools now have the following upgraded features:

The key updates and changes include:

Expanded Crawl Details: Now webmasters will be able to see all inbound links to a given URL regardless of the heading. This means that anything that comes under the 300, 400 & 500 codes will display inbound links to the URL by each URL. The data will be shared in the same way by URLs listed under the Robots.txt and Malware headings. Crawl details have now been expanded and webmasters will not be limited to seeing inbound links pointing to pages that return a 400 header response code.

Improving Email Alerts: Get informed pronto via email if there is any malware alert placed by Bing on your account. Bing will send an email if they want you to see your crawl rate settings, so that you may increase the crawl rate and give a chance for your content to be crawled faster.

URL Normalization Suggestions: There are URL normalization tips being offered by Bing, but they will all be disabled by default. Webmasters may customize their elements they need to include for normalization, which is why Bing is also increasing the number of query string parameters per site from 25 items to 50 items. This will be a help to webmasters looking to fix any canonicalization issues at the source.

Deeper Data In Index Explorer: Now the traffic data will appear within the Index Explorer tool.
DNS verification: Bing has now made it possible for webmasters to verify their website via DNS for domains in their account.

adCenter Data Integration: Now the Avg CPC column will show up on the left of the traffic data. Further details will be on the left of the column and you can see the effective keywords faster.

What do you think of these updates? Do share your view. To learn how to use Bing Webmaster Tools, see this. For SEO tips on Bing, see this.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Bing Webmaster Tools Updated With New URL Normalization Tips And Crawl Details Expansion!

Bing For Mobile Goes HTML5 For Android And iOS, Windows Phone 7 Waiting In Line!

Navneet Kaushal — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:15:47 +0000

The Bing team announced that Bing for mobile is now using HTML5, to support better browsing experience. The new version of the Bing for Mobile app for iPhone and Android was announced on the 2nd of November and Bing is quoted as saying, “the updated version uses HTML5 to blend the mobile browse experience with the app experience so you get a consistent and fast mobile search experience whether you’re using m.bing.com from your browser or the Bing app.”

This updates Bing for Mobile app is available in versions that are fit for Apple iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch) and also support the Google Android run smartphones and tablets. The announcement led the tech experts’ attention to the fact that the app was built on HTML5 instead of Microsoft’s own Silverlight multimedia display technology. It is to be noted that Silverlight is equipped to run on iOS and Android, still Bing Mobile chose HTML5 as the platform.

The reason for the same is as quoted from Bing, “Using HTML5, our goal is to build a mobile experience that leverages the unique capabilities of the different platforms, including camera support and voice search, while making the functions the apps can provide consistent across the platforms and in the future callable by engines to help people get from search to doing.”

What Does The App Do?

The new features that come with the app update are:

Maps/List Split View: This will give the users a cool way to view business listings and directions and a map in a single view. Consequently the location of the search query will become really easy to see. This split view also works for driving directions and transit.
Deals: For the shopping fans, the app will support one-stop deal shopping and convenient mobile phone access for local deals. This is supported by more than 100 dealers all across the USA.
Video Domain: This was introduced in October on m.bing, the new video domain is now available on iPhone.
Transit/Real-Time: This is an Android specific app that will show transit routing/real-time transit and news. All features that were previously only available on m.bing.com.

Who Gets The New App?

The new app is at the moment available for iPhone and Android devices across the United States. To get the updated app, go to the Android Market. The Verizon Android users need to go here for the app. The Apple users can go to the iPhone App store to download the updated app for better mobile browsing.

Why Was Windows Phone 7 Left Behind?

This question has been doing the rounds that Microsoft brought its Bing for Mobile app for Android and iOS first and not for its very own Windows Phone 7. Bing is quoted as saying that the app for Windows platform is coming soon, “We're working to release the same consistent experience for RIM and Windows Phone 7 devices in the future, and will share more details as they become available.”

This decision by Microsoft seems sensible as Android and iOS, comprising the bulk of the smartphone market need apps first. In order to get Bing high on the choice of mobile users, Microsoft let go of the OS wars and launched the app for its competitors first.

What do you think of Bing’s move and the app? Share your views with us.

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Bing For Mobile Goes HTML5 For Android And iOS, Windows Phone 7 Waiting In Line!

Now Bing Powers Yahoo Organic Search All Over The World Barring Korea!

Navneet Kaushal — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 12:18:06 +0000

It's official now. Yahoo search is powered by Bing, whether it is a desktop search or a mobile one. Yahoo has given the lead to Microsoft Bing. The only exception is of Korea where this algorithmic transition has not yet happened.

As Yahoo declared that the transition process is complete, and also explained why Korea remains outside the loop, “Yahoo! has completed the algorithmic transition to Bing in all global markets (except Korea), across desktop and mobile, for all Yahoo! and syndication traffic. This has been a huge effort spanning 20-plus months involving many people across Yahoo! and Microsoft. Only Korea, which involves a three-way integration between Yahoo, Microsoft and Daum, remains, and is expected to complete by the end of the year. ”

This process of transferring the search algorithms started in August 2010, when Yahoo Search stopped providing their own algorithmic search results in the USA and Canada. The process of transfer has been slow and they have moved one country at a time, whilst Yahoo handing over their search technology and search engine to Microsoft.

The transfer process has not been easy, as Yahoo explains the process, “We had to confirm Bing could handle Yahoo’s capacity across multiple global datacenters, including new ones that were brought online to serve the needs of the Search Alliance. The fact that all the cutovers went remarkably smoothly and were essentially non-events from an operational perspective is a testament to the thorough job both teams did. ”

Now, the transition is nearly complete, with the exception of Korea. And that too will be done by the end of 2011. The transition wave reached Australia, Brazil and Mexico, and then Yahoo UK was powered by Bing. The Bing Yahoo Search alliance reached Asia markets in September, and now it is nearly done.

This transition is for organic search only. Paid search transition is still mid way. Do you think this search alliance will impact Google in any way? Do leave your comment.

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Now Bing Powers Yahoo Organic Search All Over The World Barring Korea!

Bing Deals – The New Initiative From Bing To Facilitate Your Daily Deals Searching!

Navneet Kaushal — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:25:32 +0000

Bing has announced the launch of a new deals site. However, bing.com/deals is a partnered venture between Bing and other deals sites, such as Groupon, LivingSocial, Nordstrom and Target.

But why did Bing decide to set up a deals site?

Well, Bing has said that a comScore data reveals a 24% growth in the deals audience last year, while a recent Bing/Impulse survey shows 61% of people to have become more dependent on daily deals in the last six months. But an overabundance of deals is getting these people exposed to irrelevant deals, thus finding a proper deal a painful experience. Nevertheless, 87% of people have told Bing, as per the latter's claim, that they will be more dependent on deals provided they can find a one-stop source of all relevant deals.

Bing claims to have tried to address this need of daily deals sites users by setting up this new deals site.

Bing has said that it has gathered deals from prominent providers and retailers to ensure that the target users can locate all the best deals in one central location, instead of wading through a crowd of deal sites. Bing has also promised the rolling out of more money saving features in the coming weeks.

The key features -

One-Stop Shop- It represents an aggregation of more than 200,000 deals cutting across the USA, which also include local deals. This helps the user to compare the various deals and identify the best one.
Browse for the Best Deals- Bing has tried to organize the deals in a manner that irrelevant deals do not come in the way. The user is able to browse the deals on the basis of retailer, location, keywords or category, or can simply have a look at the best deals of the day.
Visual Search Results- Steps have been taken to make the deal search results visually organized on the screen, so that the user can easily browse through the options and identify the deal most appropriate for him.
Daily Deals- Just one click will expose the user to the best deals in his area, entailing significant savings.
More Deals on the Go- Availing Bing Mobile Deals at m.bing.com will make the user benefit from those same deals which are accessible on the PC as well.

Bing's decision to set up this deals site comes close on the heels of some other additions/changes/makeovers, such as going for a homepage makeover or incorporating "Action Buttons" to book flights/hotels and rent cars.

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Bing Deals – The New Initiative From Bing To Facilitate Your Daily Deals Searching!

Bing Adds Video Background To Welcome Fall!

Navneet Kaushal — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 11:36:09 +0000

Bing has added a video background which shows changing seasons at Grand Teton National Park. The idea behind uploading the HTML5 enabled video seems to be welcoming the season of fall.

The video is 13 seconds long, and is of about 1.9 MB.

The step may be part of Bing's overall effort to go for a change in its look and feel. Just recently Bing was in news for going for a homepage makeover, wherein its prime focus seemed to be getting more user/visitor friendly.

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Bing Adds Video Background To Welcome Fall!

Yahoo! Bing Transitions Expand To Asia Markets!

Navneet Kaushal — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:13:01 +0000

Yahoo! and Bing have expanded combined search engine operation service for the Asian users. The markets that will come under the purview of this service include Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam. However, a notable exception will be that of Korea.

In fact Yahoo! and Bing recently completed this algorithmic transition for the European markets of Greece, Poland, Romania, Turkey and Switzerland (in German, French and Italian languages, i.e. the three main languages of that country).

In August the duo announced a similar step for the following countries/regions- Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Russia, the Netherlands, Sweden and MENA (Middle East and North African countries, in Arabic language). And that announcement had again come close on the heels of other similar announcements, wherein Yahoo! and Bing had informed about the launch of this service in various other countries, such as New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, USA, Mexico, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain and UK.

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Yahoo! Bing Transitions Expand To Asia Markets!

Press Bing “Action Buttons” To Book Flights/Hotels And Rent Cars!

Navneet Kaushal — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 10:08:38 +0000

Bing has come up with Action Buttons aimed at facilitating booking of flights and hotels, renting cars, etc. The service entails searching across seven popular categories- airlines, rental cars, couriers, hotels, restaurants, banks and software downloads.

From now onwards, when you will search on Bing under the above categories, the search engine will present you with buttons meant for top actions on the site. For example, while searching for airlines Bing will present you with action buttons like book a flight, check flight status, and check into a flight.

But how could Bing decide beforehand that exactly which options you would be looking for if you are searching for airlines, or courier, or any of the other categories? Well, Bing has said that its algorithms have determined it on the basis of how people search.

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Press Bing “Action Buttons” To Book Flights/Hotels And Rent Cars!

Bing Goes For A Makeover!

Navneet Kaushal — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 11:06:41 +0000

Bing has gone for a homepage makeover, with the prime focus seemingly being how to get more user/visitor friendly.

The change includes some decluttering of the home page, which has given a smart and sleek look to it. Besides, Bing has installed some mobile friendly elements on the page, thus boosting its user friendly appeal.

However, the most notable change is probably the shifting of most of the navigation to the explore bar.

There are some minor changes as well, which nevertheless play some part in giving a different look to the home page. For example, the 'popular now' items now appear to be more conspicuous. Bing has also taken the back/forth navigation arrows and the Facebook "like" button to the top right position.

One question is doing its round in the Web world. Do these changes indicate that Bing HTML5 is on its way? Guess Web enthusiast do not have to wait much to get the answer for that.

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Bing Goes For A Makeover!

Tips and Tricks On How To Improve Rank In Bing!

Navneet Kaushal — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:43:03 +0000

In a recent interview by Eric Enge, Bing's Sr. Product Manager, Duane Forrester highlighted important pointers on how your website and pages can rank high in Bing's search results “in my view the priorities for websites are content, social media and link building, in that order.”

Whilst there were many great recommendations made in the interview, the key points noted are:

A complete user friendly experience:

User friendly website and pages, which includes great content, will get you in the good books of Bing. Duane said “when you delight someone with the best user-experience possible, we pick up all those signals that person shares about their delight, and those signals will help influence our perception of your quality.” All in all this means, “The end goal of everything we do at Bing is to provide a better result set for a searcher.”

Additionally in many of Duane’s responses there is reference to how Bing makes use of click-thru-rate (CTR) and user experience on a webpage to help them determine your webpage's rankings in the search results. This suggests that it extremely vital that you develop good landing pages for your visitors to interact with. A high bounce rate will lead to Bing devaluing your page.

The Social Element:

When asked by Eric if “Social media has become an important input to search.” Duane Forrester discussed, “Yes, in my view the priorities for websites are content, social media and link building, in that order. Think of it as a three-piece pie. At some point, social could be more important than content, but that assumes you have excellent content in place.”

This asserts the massive impact of social media on the way that your website performs on Bing. Personally, I think this is the one most important aspect to be considered from the interview. So basically, as part of your SEO plan ensure your website gets more social. For example, get more Facebook Like and Shared, Tweet away, stay active on Google+ and other rather influential social networks.

RSS Feeds and XML sitemaps:

To ensure that Bing views your sites he emphasizes the importance of making use of valid XML sitemaps and RSS feeds “things like RSS are going to become a desired way for us to find content”. As for the site maps he informed that, “Your Sitemaps need to be clean. We have a 1% allowance for dirt in a Sitemap… If we see more than a 1% level of dirt, we begin losing trust in the Sitemap”. So if you want Bing to see your websites, ensure you update your feeds regularly and make sure it done error-free.

The page performance factor:

“Bing does not use page performance as a ranking factor.” While it would appear from what Duane first said in the interview that load time of the page does not play a role in determining the page rank. However later on in the interview he contradicts this assertion by saying, “provide the searcher with the fastest possible answer to their question.”

This suggests that there certainly is some significance on the page performance that is taken into consideration bearing in mind all other factors are equal. Consequently, we would recommend that you make sure that your website does loads quickly because if you don't you are at a risk of loosing out on your Google rankings because you followed Bing’s rather contradictory suggestion.

To learn more about Bing's tips for SEO read the full interview.

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Tips and Tricks On How To Improve Rank In Bing!

Twitter Renews The Realtime Deal With Bing, Google Deal Still Uncertain!

Navneet Kaushal — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 11:40:55 +0000

Twitter and Bing have announced that they have renewed the deal that lets Bing access Twitter’s information in an amicable exchange on Twitter itself.

Twitter's spokesperson Carolyn Penner used the Storify service to announce the press release via Twitter conversation. Here's what the exchange looks like:

Deal Details?

Whilst there is no official disclosure of the deal out yet, there's been enough buzz around that Microsoft is rumored to have paid out a reasonably large sum for the Twitter services.

In a confirmation from Microsoft a spokesperson told us:

“I can confirm that Bing is extending its collaboration with Twitter. We are not disclosing terms of the deal.”

What about Google?

As for Google, there is no such word, following the dismissal of Google Realtime which was using Twitter data for generating realtime feeds until July. If anything there’s indication of a little slam against Google in the above conversation:

“@bing Totally! Search w/o Twitter = old news. You & @MSN are amazing at using Tweets to make search better & help people stay in the know.”

When asked Penner if there was news from the Google's end, the word was: “Nope.”

The straight up denial combined with the tweet exchange indicates that Twitter and Google can not be anymore further apart?! Also with Google hyping the service when it was launched initially makes you question why such harsh reactions now?

Meanwhile the journalists are dearly missing the tool (Google Realtime), which was powered by Twitter’s feeds mainly. However the discontinuation of the tool has barely had any impact on the ordinary users. Personally I like Twitter's information over Google, however I would not mind settling for Google+ content powering the Realtime Search. Anything is better than being unable to search through content on Google. Google seems to have forgotten that Realtime was now just about Tweets. It also used content from other social networks too.

The Twitter-Bing Story:

Whilst Bing’s had Twitter on its side since October 2009 it does not seem to work any wonders to attract visitors over to Bing. Perhaps because if you looking for feeds from Twitter you can be hard-pressed to find it. For example, in Bing's search on “twitter”, this conversation between Bing and Twitter does not appear at all:

Additionally nor do you get a link to Bing Social Search, the primary way to find tweets on Bing via the Bing menu at the top of the page.

Topsy the Real (time) Winner:

Overall It seems like Topsy is the only real winner. As it is a better resource compared to Bing especially if you are seeking tweets that are beyond a day or more.

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Twitter Renews The Realtime Deal With Bing, Google Deal Still Uncertain!

Tips & Tricks To SEO For Bing!

Navneet Kaushal — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:32:59 +0000

Bing's Duane Forrester emphasized that, “Bing likes quality, original content. Skip syndicated content and articles as a way forward.” on a Webmaster World.com forum.

In a discussion seeking for directions on driving more traffic to websites via Bing, Duane provided a starters guide about vital information to help SEO's create Bing friendly sites.

Following is the checklist of the areas that Bing suggest you bear in mind as you set out to build or optimize your website:

Subsequently, Bing suggests you ask yourself the following questions as you set out to create a search amicable website; “for every page you have: Is this the single best result for a searcher? Have I developed an authority page for a given query; a page that will thoroughly answer a searcher's needs?”

All in all, its main focus seems to be rewarding websites that provide an enriched user experience.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Tips & Tricks To SEO For Bing!

Now Bing Webmaster Tools To Show Integrated Data From Yahoo!

Navneet Kaushal — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 12:34:28 +0000

Bing's Webmaster Tools now shows integrated data from Yahoo Traffic in some reports and areas.

The integration began on the 12th August, however, September will the first month that will see complete merger of the combined data. Justifying this amalgamation, Bing's Duane Forrester commented, "Given the combined effort the Search Alliance represents, it makes sense to showcase relevant data from both engines within a webmaster account."

The good news is, most areas and the data within your accounts itself are not going to be affected with this merger.

Following are the noticeable changes that are seen in the Traffic Tab's, Traffic summary report and Page Traffic reports:

Impressions- will increase as a result of showing combined impressions for the listings across both search engines
Clicks- will also increase because of the integration of the two data numbers
Click Through Rates (CTR) will also either rise or fall as a direct consequence of the above two

If you are worried if this will affect your actual ranking, rest assured as these changes will only reflect the numbers shown and not your actual rankings.

Also note that, at the moment the data is combined by default and is updated in all the markets wherein Bing powers Yahoo search.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Now Bing Webmaster Tools To Show Integrated Data From Yahoo!

Bing's Guide To Quality Content!

Navneet Kaushal — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:48:33 +0000

Following the Google's Panda slap, now Bing reasserts it's stand for quality content as well.

When we think of quality content, Google Search is our the first automated response. However, to reinstate it's position, Bing's, Duane Forrester's blog gives webmasters some tips and tricks to creating quality content to ensure that both the users and the search engines respond to your website.

Unlike Google, that has left webmasters across the globe in murky waters of Reconsider Request, Bing seems to provide us with rather quick and easy to follow pointers that will easily make their crawler conclude that your website has quality content.

Following are the steps Bing suggests you avoid whilst producing content:

“Duplicate content – don’t use articles or content that appear in other places. Produce your own unique content.
Thin content – don’t produce pages with little relevant content on them – go deep when producing content – think “authority” when building your pages. Ask yourself if this page of content would be considered an authority on the topic.
All text/All images – work to find a balance here, including images to help explain the content, or using text to fill in details about images on the page. Remember that text held inside an image isn’t readable by the crawlers.
Being lonely – enable ways for visitors to share your content through social media.
Translation tools – rarely does a machine translation tool leave you with content that reads properly and that actually captures the original sentiment. Avoid simply using a tool to translate content from one language to the next and posting that content online.
Skipping proofreading – when you are finished producing content, take the time to check for spelling errors, grammatical mistakes and for the overall flow when reading. Does it sound like you’re repeating words too frequently? Remove them. Don’t be afraid to rewrite the content, either.
Long videos – If you produce video content, keep it easily consumable. Even a short 3 – 4 minute video can be packed with useful content, so running a video out to 20 minutes is poor form in most instances. It increases download times and leads to visitor dissatisfaction at having to wait for the video to load. Plus, if you are adding a transcription of your video, even a short video can produce a lengthy transcription.
Excessively long pages – if your content runs long, move it to a second page. Readers need a break, so be careful here to balance the length of your pages. Make sure your pagination solution doesn’t cause other issues for your search optimization efforts, though.
Content for content’s sake – if you are producing content, be sure its valuable. Don’t just add text to every page to create a deeper page. Be sure the text, images or videos are all relevant to the content of the page.”

When looking to optimize your website this comprehensive list of 'don't' seems like a good place to start from. However, some skeptics may question the reason behind Bing emphasis on quality at this juncture; is this guide any early indication towards Bing's version of Google like Panda update? Hmmm…

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Bing's Guide To Quality Content!

It's Time For Transition; From Yahoo! UK Organic Search Results To Bing!

Navneet Kaushal — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:25:30 +0000

Yahoo! is sending out updates announcing the migration of its Yahoo's European organic search results to Bing's search index tomorrow.

The email sent out by Yahoo! reads as following:

“Dear Advertiser,

We wanted to let you know that we are now ready to transition Yahoo! organic search results (the non-paid listings found on the main body of the Yahoo! search page) to Microsoft. This is an important aspect of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance and will help us toward our goal of further improving the overall relevance of Yahoo! organic results globally.

The organic search transition will begin on August 3rd 2011 for Yahoo! European properties in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.

While no action is required on your part for this transition, if organic search results are an important source of referrals to your website, you’ll want to make sure that you're prepared for this change:

Compare your organic search rankings on Yahoo! Search and Bing for the keywords that drive your business, help determine any potential impact to your traffic and sales
Decide if you’d like to modify your paid search campaigns to compensate for any changes in organic referrals that you anticipate
Review the Bing webmaster tools and optimise your website for the Bing crawler, to help ensure your site is prominently listed in both Yahoo! and Bing organic search results.

Please note that Yahoo! is NOT transitioning paid search results at this time, and you should continue managing your Yahoo! Search Marketing account as usual. We will provide you with ample notice prior to the paid search transition of your market, to help you prepare for a smooth transition.

Kind Regards,

Your partners at Yahoo!”

Back in August 2010, Yahoo announced the transition of its US property. Now it's turn for its European properties to be transformed.

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It's Time For Transition; From Yahoo! UK Organic Search Results To Bing!

Bing's Testing Mixing Ads with Organic Search Results!

Navneet Kaushal — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:47:23 +0000

Bing has done something which has sent shock waves around the internet, as it is something, that is a complete no-no for search engines. They are including Ads in their organic search results! Rimm Kaufman Group reported this testing, where the search engine was placing ads right in between the organic free search results. The thing to note here is that the Ads we not below or above the search results. They were in between.

(Courtesy-rimmkaufman.com)

The screen shot shows how well the 'ads' have blended in organic results. The small, highly unnoticeable 'Ad' written in the far right stands a chance of not being noticed at all. Now, how fair is that? Why is Bing doing this testing, has no substantial answer till now, but they are testing for the same, and this was confirmed by many.

On being contacted, a Microsoft spokesperson said: “We’re constantly testing and experimenting on Bing, and with that, we carefully measure user engagement and reaction to these changes. We have nothing further to share at this time.”

There you have it, Bing is doing something, that has always be a taboo, for search engines. They cannot place search ads inline with organic free listings. The entire purpose of clean-healthy organic search is wasted then.

It is a question of ethics for the search engines, as they cannot put paid results unobtrusively between the organic listings. The engines have tried to start paid inclusion programs before, where the content was guaranteed to be indexed, but they had no ranking factors. In 2009, Yahoo brought out their paid inclusion program, but it was packed up after the huge controversy.

Why is Bing doing this?

Will the other search engines start this 'testing' too?

What about the ethical code here?

These questions remain unanswered.

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Bing's Testing Mixing Ads with Organic Search Results!

Big 3's Joint Effort: schema.org!

Navneet Kaushal — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:03:56 +0000

Google, Bing and Yahoo! Have announced their coming together to with schema.org which is for the webmasters to help search engines their websites better. This in turn can be done by adding the markup to the websites' pages.

Here are some of the relevant details:

New Types of Markups – More than 100 have been added. A few of the popular ones are:

Creative works: CreativeWork, Book, Movie, MusicRecording, Recipe, TVSeries

Embedded non-text objects: AudioObject, ImageObject, VideoObject
Event
Organization
Person
Place, LocalBusiness, Restaurant
Product, Offer, AggregateOffer
Review, AggregateRating

2. Microdata Being Used – This is format used. To know more check out the Getting Started guide.

3. The existing rich snippet markup format will still be supported.

4. The Testing Tool – To check the accuracy of data parsing, rich snippets testing tool.

Still more can be found at Rich Snippets schema.org FAQ.

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Big 3's Joint Effort: schema.org!

Facebook Data Incorporated Into Bing For Better Search Experience!

Navneet Kaushal — Thu, 19 May 2011 06:05:52 +0000

Bing announces the incorporation Facebook data into their search results. The company said that with this latest update, Facebook and Bing users can bring the “Friend Effect” to Bing search. If you are a user of both Bing and Facebook, you can now get personalized search results “based on the opinions of your friends by simply signing into Facebook.” while you search on Bing. This means, more than facts and search engine rankings, you can now seek the opinion of your trusted friends (on Facebook) to make decisions while you search the web.

With the Facebook data incorporation, you can now “Like” stuffs on Facebook using the Bing Toolbar and juggling. They have also has added new features including:

“Liked” Results, Answers & Sites – lets you see the links “Liked” by your Facebook friends on the web.

Collective IQ – Allows you to see the collective IQ of people on Facebook to help your decision making.
Integration of Social Messages – Bing will also show you what major brands and companies are saying.
Conversational Search – With the combination of Facebook’s communication tools and Bing, you can make decisions based on an active dialogue while you search on the web.
Expanded Facebook Profile Search – While searching for a specific person on Facebook, you can see more detailed profile including location, education, and employment details etc., of the person.

Flight Deals – If you liked a city on Bing, they will send flights deals directly to your Facebook feed.

There are more features mentioned including Shared Shopping Lists, Travel Wish List & Friends Who Live Here, Popular Sites and so on. Bing also says that “Our vision is to combine Bing with the power of discovery and empowerment of conversation. That’s when the magic will really begin.”

Bing has been in partnership with Facebook since October 2010, but they have been using a very less amount of Facebook data to influence their search results. However, with this latest move, they seem to be taking social data even more seriously. Facebook and Bing users can expect to see changes in their search results in days to come.

Here's a video of Bing Director Stefan Weitz talking about the latest changes.

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Facebook Data Incorporated Into Bing For Better Search Experience!