Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Microsoft Bing

Bing Redesign Becomes Much More Social

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:39:16 +0000

Microsoft has announced a new major redesign of Bing.com. A new Sidebar is being added to Bing search that shows your contacts and activity from social networks including Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Google was heavily criticized for integrating Google+ into search results and not offering information from other social networks. Google did not sign any business deals with Twitter and Facebook to offer data from those social networks. Google used to have a deal with Twitter, but that contract expired. Microsoft renewed their contract with Twitter. The social Sidebar on Bing.com will show relevant search results. Like if you search for the Taj Mahal on Bing, you might see a picture of your Facebook friend visiting the Taj Mahal. Bing will also be adding data from LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Skype to the Sidebar this summer.

Microsoft Gives Bing A Minimalistic Redesign

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 02 May 2012 16:56:28 +0000

Microsoft Principal Group Program Manager Sally Salas wrote a blog post about how Bing has changed around their search results pages. Bing has removed unnecessary distractions and built a de-cluttered experience to help you find results faster. The “left rail” has been removed and the header has been minimized. All of the result annotations and social data is consistent in one spot now to make the page easier to use. As a result of the design, load time is faster and relevance has been improved under the hood. To make a comparison, above is the new design and below is the old design

Google Will Be Paying Mozilla About $300 Million PER YEAR For The Search Deal

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 22:29:10 +0000

Google and Mozilla have struck a search deal for another three years. Google will be paying a little bit under $300 million to renew the deal. This is a huge jump from a previous arrangement that Google had with Mozilla. Google had to outbid other companies like Microsoft and Yahoo! for the search deal. The $900 million agreement is the minimum revenue guarantee for delivering search queries that will be garnered by consumers using Firefox.

Microsoft was pushing heavily for the deal because they are spending a lot of money to grow Bing’s market share. Although Microsoft still has the dominant market share with the Internet Explorer browser, Google is quickly catching up with their Chrome browser.

[AllThingsD]

Microsoft Bing Adds Mall Maps

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 04:31:52 +0000

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has created a new mobile map browsing feature to Bing.com. This will make it easy to find your favorite retail stores in a mall. I often times find myself visiting malls in random places, so having this feature accessible on my mobile device would make my life easier.

You can find the feature built into m.bing.com. Bing had announced the mall maps feature for the web last December. Now the company’s directory of mall maps has 400 in their database.

“Venue maps are a great way to save time and frustration when planning your next summer vacation or that last minute shopping trip – getting you in and out the door faster,” stated the company. “Additionally, we now also provide the capability to search on the map.”

[GeekWire]

Bing To Highlight Links That Your Facebook Friends Like

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 17 May 2011 00:36:40 +0000

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has a close-knit relationship with Facebook. In October 2007, Microsoft invested $240 million into Facebook for 1.6% in equity. Now Bing users will see search results that are influenced by Facebook friends. If you find a website on Bing that your Facebook friends like, then you will see a widget that indicates a thumbs up next to it.

“Our research shows that nearly half of people say seeing their friends ‘likes’ within search results could help them make better decisions. Bing’s new features make it possible for people to make decisions with their trusted friends,” wrote Microsoft SVP of Online Audience Business Yusuf Mehdi.

Bing Surpasses Yahoo! As The Second Most Used Search Engine

Amit Chowdhry — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 07:20:05 +0000

It wasn’t too long ago when Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) was dangling a $44 billion acquisition offer for Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). After Yahoo! strutted away, Microsoft decided to revamp their own search engine and named it Bing.com. This past week, Bing.com surpassed Yahoo!’s market. In Charlie Sheen words, Microsoft is #winning. Google remains on top at number one with a 90 percent market share.

Why is Google still on top? I believe one of the reasons why is because Gmail is much better than Hotmail. And people are generally loyal to the search engine brand associated with their e-mail provider. You just cannot beat threaded e-mail conversations IMHO. Press release of Bing’s market share below:

Bing overtakes Yahoo! globally for first time

Boston, USA & Dublin, Ireland; Tuesday, 1st March, 2011: The Bing search engine overtook Yahoo! for the first time worldwide in January and increased its lead in February according to web analytics company, StatCounter. Its research arm StatCounter Global Stats finds that globally Bing reached 4.37% in February ahead of Yahoo! at 3.93%. Both trail far behind Google’s 89.94% of the global search engine market.

In the United States Yahoo! at 9.74% still retains its lead over Bing at 9.03%. Google’s share in the US is 79.63%. In July 2009 Microsoft announced an agreement whereby Bing would power the Yahoo! search technology. This has been implemented in the US, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Mexico.

“It is significant that Bing overtook Yahoo! globally for the first time on a monthly basis but it remains a tough battle to claw back Google’s market share,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Although Google dipped below the 90% mark in February worldwide for the first time since August 2009 it shows little sign of losing its global dominance any time soon.”

StatCounter, which specialises in website visitor analysis for organisations and bloggers, provides free lifetime stats and free detailed analysis on the latest 500 hits. Members can upgrade to access more detailed stats from $5 a month.

StatCounter Global Stats are based on aggregate data collected on a sample of over 15 billion page views per month from across the StatCounter network of more than three million websites.

StatCounter, which provides free website traffic information, publishes search engine stats in its StatCounter Global Stats, a free online research tool. It also monitors internet market share battles including browsers, Social Media and operating systems including mobile.

[Engadget]

Microsoft Partners With KAYAK For Bing Travel

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:24:49 +0000

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has partnered with travel search engine KAYAK.com. In the next few weeks Bing Travel will aggregate travel search engine data gathered from KAYAK.com. Bing Travel is also best known for a service known as Farecast. Farecast charts flight prices and makes predictions based on whether now is a good time to buy a flight or hold out. This is especially useful now considering that oil prices are at an all-time high and domestic airlines have increased prices for the 6th time in a row. [Bing Community Blog]

Bing Redesigns Toolbar To Look Like A Social Toolbar

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 20:44:59 +0000

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has redesigned their toolbar and is calling it the “Bing Bar.” The Bing Bar is like a social dashboard where you can read the news, read Facebook updates, check the weater, analyze stocks, etc. The information is gathered from drop-down windows. There isn’t a Mac version available for the Bing Bar yet. It only works with Internet Explorer as of right now. [SearchEngineLand]

Microsoft: Google Manipulated Bing Search Through “Click Fraud”

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:02:34 +0000

Microsoft Senior Vice President of the Online Services Division Yusuf Mehdi took some time today to clarify Google’s accusations about Bing copying their search results. Mehdi said that Bing does not copy results from competitors ever.

“Google engaged in a ‘honeypot’ attack to trick Bing. In simple terms, Google’s ‘experiment’ was rigged to manipulate Bing search results through a type of attack also known as ‘click fraud.’ That’s right, the same type of attack employed by spammers on the web to trick consumers and produce bogus search results. What does all this cloak and dagger click fraud prove? Nothing anyone in the industry doesn’t already know. As we have said before and again in this post, we use click stream optionally provided by consumers in an anonymous fashion as one of 1,000 signals to try and determine whether a site might make sense to be in our index.”

Mehdi had also pointed out that Google copied a few features from Bing such as infinite scroll in image search, travel and shopping features, and a visual approach to searching with a Facebook and Twitter partnership.

Google: Bing Is Copying Us! Microsoft: No We’re Not!

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 04:27:20 +0000

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is accusing Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) of copying their search results. Google has a sting operation that proves that Bing watches what people search for on Google and the results that they select. Microsoft then uses these results to improve Bing’s own search results. Google compared this to one person leaning over and copying off another student’s exam.

“I’ve spent my career in pursuit of a good search engine,” stated Google Fellow Amit Singhal. “I’ve got no problem with a competitor developing an innovative algorithm. But copying is not innovation, in my book.”

Microsoft said that they use over 1,000 different signals and features in their ranking algorithm. They said that today’s story was a creative tactic by a competitor and they will take it as a back-handed compliment.

“We use multiple signals and approaches in ranking search results. The overarching goal is to do a better job determining the intent of the search so we can provide the most relevant answer to a given query. Opt-in programs like the toolbar help us with clickstream data, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites,” stated Bing Director Stefan Weitz.