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
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.”
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.
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 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.
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).
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.
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.
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:
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?
@pagetraffic
