Bing’s White Paper Category in Need of a 301 Bandaid
By now, those of us even remotely up to date with what’s happening in the search industry know that Bing released its Webmaster Whitepaper almost 2 weeks ago.
I find it refreshing that the Bing Webmaster Center Team has referred to SEO as an opportunity to help your website stand out from the crowd
in the last couple of pages of the document. Not to infer that SEO will change so much on account of Bing, but it’s nice to see the Bing team demonstrate some examples of how the search engine’s categorized results lists will affects SEO efforts in general.
I’m pretty surprised however that in the 12 days since the whitepaper’s release, there hasn’t been more community response to the post, with a mere 32 comments, and very few questions.
In all honesty, I’m not too keen on the stripping of capital letters from comments on Bing Community, but I can live with that.
Don’t get me wrong, I do like what I see so far with this search engine. But what I am having a hard time understanding however, is that in the 6 posts of Bing’s ‘announcement’ ‘annoucement’ category made since May 28 2009, nobody has bothered to correct the typo and 301 redirect to the proper spelling of ‘announcement’.
Is it just me or does $80 million to $100 million (on marketing and advertising for Bing), not go as far as it used to?
Microsoft launches Bing Search Engine 2 Days Early
Bing was originally scheduled for launch June 3, 2009, however, Microsoft’s “Decision Engine” went live today, and aims to compete with Google and divert its share with $80 Million in marketing.
In announcing the search engine May 28, 2009 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Bing (AKA Kumo) hopes to help users receive the information they’re searching for faster and that the decision engine goes beyond search to help customers deal with information overload. When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.
Bing Search Engine will replace Live search, and focuses on 4 key areas:
The main feature that I notice from the start is that aside from regular search results, certain queries offer categorized search results in the sidebar as well as related search, as seen below.
Also of interest, each thumbnail in the results of video searches will play the first 30 seconds of the video on mouse over, giving you a sneak preview before clicking the link. The world of Search Engine optimization just got another toy to play with – or rip apart, depending who’s sitting in front of the toy box.
The Emerging Vision for Market Research
If there’s any question in your mind whether social media is merely a passing trend or a major consideration in any internet marketing campaign, wonder no longer.
Last month, more than 200 major advertising and market research executive representatives attended the sold out Industry Leader Forum – “Transforming Research. Are You Listening” – held by the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF). The ARF, a leading Research Transformation initiative, will enable members to stay ahead of the curve in a fast-changing, consumer-driven world
.
The event, which took place in New York on Oct 29, focused primarily on methods of tracking the ubiquitous online discussions of brands, companies, products and services that numerous social media web sites and platforms host. Bob Barocci, President and CEO of The ARF, shed some light on several of the newer terms being used by advertising researchers, such as ‘listening pipes’, ’storytelling’, ‘inspiration’, ‘content masters’ (referring to millennials), ‘consumer backyard’ and ‘brand backyard’.
Case histories of “listening” in action were presented by General Mills, MTV, Sony Electronics, and Unilever. Obama pollster Joel Benenson, revealed how public perceptions were gathered in the president-elect’s leading-edge electoral campaign.
The Arf’s Research Transformation Council are:
- Joel Benenson – Founding Partner & President, Benenson Strategy Group – Co-Founder, iModerate, & pollster for Barack Obama
- Jonathan Carson – President, International, Nielsen Online
- Kim Dedeker – VP, External Capability Leadership-Global Consumer & Market Knowledge, Procter & Gamble
- Jeff Flemings – SVP, Renaissance Planning, VivaKi
- Gayle Fuguitt – VP, Consumer Insights, General Mills
- Stephen Kim – Senior Director, Microsoft Branded Experiences and Entertainment, Microsoft Advertising
- Michael Perman – Senior Director, Levi Strauss
- Eric Salama – Chairman and CEO, Kantar
- Patti Wakeling – Senior Manager, Media Insights, Unilever
Pete Blackshaw, the Executive Vice President of the Digital Strategic Services group at Nielsen Online gave a presentation on the “Six Signals of Listening to the Unprompted Voice of the Consumer.“. Pete is a recognized expert in interactive marketing, word of mouth, and consumer understanding, and originally coined the term consumer-generated media (CGM). See Pete’s summary of the highlights from October’s event in his video below.
The ARF’s next Forum will be a one day workshop from 8:00AM to 6:00PM on January 27, 2009 at Bently Reserve, San Francisco. Confirmed speakers include:
- Kim Dedeker (Proctor & Gamble)
- Joel Benenson (Benenson Strategy Group)
- Michael Perman (Levi Strauss)
- Pete Blackshaw (Nielsen Online)
Very exciting stuff!
Microsoft Research Unveils Social Search Engine ‘uRank’
Microsoft Research has released a new social search engine prototype called “uRank”. Social search engines boast personalization features such as allowing users to move search results around to better suit their tastes, and share information with others.
uRank “…allows people to organize, edit and annotate search results…to better support people as they are exploring a topic, comparing information, keeping track of what they’re learning, and collaborating with others…”
. Microsoft Research proposes to use these interactions to contribute to the perceived relevance of search results opposed to traditional algorithmic methods of search engine results indexing. uRank is currently accessible to US users only. Apparently they’re ‘working on that’.
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