Bing

You are currently browsing articles tagged Bing.

Search Engine Marketing is PVP

July 11, 2010 in Advertising, Online, Search, Search Engines by Anthony | 2 comments

EVE Online (or Spreadsheets in Space as it is also known) is a MMORPG with strong PVP gameplay. There are a large number of other ways to play EVE Online, from the market through to PVE, but it is PVP that stands out in the game. It has been called a ganking game, which is a fair comment, as there is a real risk of loss of gear and skills (comparable to levels in other games). Loss of gear and skills creates behaviours aimed at minimising this risk while maximising rewards. In other MMORPGs with little or no chance of loss, PVP activity tends to be restricted to the market.

Winning at PVP in EVE Online

Winning at PVP in EVE Online

Wining at Spreadsheets in Space

PVP in EVE Online is not fair. In fact the challenge in PVP in EVE Online is in setting up these unfair encounters. In most MMORPGs, the actual act of combat consists of a few mouse clicks and some waiting. EVE Online is no different. It is the risk of losing stuff that makes players focus on everything before the actual combat a lot more. It is taking the right mix of ships, avoiding being out-numbered and cornered by a superior foe and acting before the opponent even knows they are in a fight where player skill starts to make a real difference.

Why SEM is like EVE Online PVP

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) in very similar to PVP. It is a zero-sum environment where operators compete for a resource through actions governed by a set of rules and environmental factors generated through user behaviour. There are a few principles that carry over from EVE Online PVP to SEM.

  • Situational awareness is king
    • Know how the advertising network works
    • Understand competitive activity
    • Understand how the market behaves
  • Observe, act and assess
    • Analysis without an accompanying action is useless
    • Assess the effectiveness of activity & reassess decision making model
    • And repeat…
  • Know where you can compete and where you can’t
    • Don’t waste time & resources competing directly with advertisers intent on outspending you
    • Find alternative ways of reaching potential customers.

Information is the key. Understanding how the query space works, having good situational awareness, and knowing where in the sales funnel certain terms are is valuable. It won’t save you from the SEM equivalent of a gate camp (high margin and ‘branding’ campaigns with large budgets), but it is essential for remaining competitive without burning through your budget.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Search Engines & Entertaining New Ideas

June 27, 2010 in Online, Search, Search Engines by Anthony | No comments

Search as a Portal

Bing has announced some new features in search this week. Explained in the Bing Gets a Fresh Look post, content themed on Auto, Finance and Entertainment information was used to demonstrate “great new decision-making tools in [these] areas”. Similar to the enhanced Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) served by Google and Bing, these new tools take search closer to portals in their content consumption model.

In many ways SERPs are becoming more like portal content pages. Search goes beyond an ordered directory of URLs and descriptions. Content including maps, scanned books, images, video, news, blogs, product listings, and social media material is indexed and increasingly being presented in the main SERP as a part of an enhanced search result.

Indexing Entertainment Media

The Internet is an important source of entertainment, either supporting content available through other channels or material native to the web. As said by Bing’s Yusuf Mehdi in his “A New Entertainment Experience For Bing” post:

“In the field of entertainment, 76 percent of people use search to help find and navigate their entertainment options online, but only 10 percent say they have a trusted place to go.”

Entertainment information, from song lyrics to game trailers to film reviews, matters to the user, and can take many different forms. The challenge is in organising it in a human friendly way, similar to what has already started to happen with geographic information and maps. The search engine can programmatically add more content in locations under their control in a theoretically infinitely scalable fashion.

Search in the Music Business

Google is also in the entertainment business. Beyond their search properties and YouTube, Google’s acquisition of Simplifymedia during May hints strongly at Google directly entering the music business. It is likely that Google would add their product to the search experience in the same way as Google Commerce feeds (formerly Google Base) are added to the index or through applications in Chrome or Android.

Lady Gaga on Bing

Lady Gaga on Bing

Lady Gaga on Yahoo! Music

Lady Gaga on Yahoo! Music

Search is starting to provide a portal-like experience. As the search experience becomes richer, more personalised and more aware of the location of the user, it gets closer to providing the experience sites like Yahoo! do, but with finer levels of customisation through queries. Pages like Yahoo! Music may soon be eclipsed by pages like Bing Entertainment or the current Bing Lady Gaga SERP. In the end it will be how the consumer prefers to consume and seek out content that will determine this. It is passive consumption versus searching with intent.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Microsoft, Bing and Spindex being Social

May 9, 2010 in Online, Social by Anthony | No comments

Shop and Share with Bing was announced earlier this week. Integrating sharing links within product searches is not exactly groundbreaking. The idea that social proof works to drive purchasing behaviour online is not new. A number of different sites such as mypicklist.com (now gone), ThisNext.com and Amazon through their ratings and owned product lists support this. What is interesting is that this is another way in which Search Engines are beginning to act like portals.

The team behind Bing has shown a willingness to be as creative as Google in their approach to search. From launch, Bing has been referred to as a decision engine, and they seem focused on this goal. The Microsoft Fuse Labs Spindex project using Bing certainly matches this aim. It is an inclusive integration of the user’s social network into their search experience. The Search Engine Result Page (SERP) is influenced by the behaviour of members of the user’s social networks. This looks like an extension of what Google is doing with Social Search and in a way is a good demonstration of just how pervasive a social Internet can be.

The Preview of the new Windows Live Messenger also shows real intent to move into this area. Bringing social content together through a stand alone application, one which millions of people will certainly already have installed on their computers at some point, will be interesting.

Between a fragmenting web and social content being used across multiple platforms and tools including search and general content discovery, the online experience of any two people attempting to complete the same task will very rarely match. There are a number of ways to move around this, such as building a branded query space, becoming the portal or controlling the platform or device they use. Of course not adapting is always an option as well.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Can Yahoo! just be a Portal?

February 20, 2010 in Online, Search, Search Engines, Social by Anthony | 2 comments

The big news of the week was that Yahoo! and Microsoft’s search agreement was approved by both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission. Yahoo! is now closer to replacing their search, and search advertising product with Bing’s.

From what has been said, up to Yahoo!’s latest post on the matter, Yahoo! is going to stop being a search engine and simply focus on providing enriched data. In their words:

1) Providing you with rich results that display the most relevant information from Yahoo!’s rich content properties, as well as other great product, local, entertainment, reference, social and tech sites.

2) Showing specific results from vertical search products, like Yahoo! News.

3) Providing handy tools on the left-side of the page, such as our Search Pad and Search Scan apps, site filters that help you refine and explore the search results more easily, and related search term suggestions to help you refine your search further if the results aren’t quite what you were looking for.

Yahoo! seems to see itself as a portal, and is operating as if a portal can be distinct from a search engine. However, Google and Bing have taken a different approach, and have demonstrated that a search engine can become a portal. The inclusion of many Google properties, such as Maps, Base and so on, onto their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) has been discussed at length for years now. Bing has also chosen to follow a similar path, and have developed a suite of additional products of their own. Both Google and Microsoft also have email products that include social functionality in Google Buzz and Windows Live. It is interesting that while a portal site is moving away from search, search is moving towards becoming portals.

Yahoo! SERP for Vancouver

Yahoo! SERP for Vancouver

Google SERP for Vancouver

Google SERP for Vancouver

Bing SERP for Vancouver

Bing SERP for Vancouver

A lot of what Yahoo! has discussed that they can bring to the Internet as a part of their portal business is already provided as a part of the Google and Bing search experience, or as a part of their additional properties. Where we are with search in terms of the richness of data that can be sorted and surfaced in search, each SERP is essentially a portal site. Depending on the term, photos, news, blogs, social commentary and maps can all be presented on the SERP as an algorithmically generated themed portal page. In getting out of search Yahoo! is limiting itself to competing with Bing and Google purely on content that they have the rights to, their existing user-base and presentation of information.

Is this enough? Both Google and Bing are creating more and more properties. Both Google and Bing have been developing more inventory requiring very little ongoing maintenance and have been rolling them into their main SERPs. With the inclusion of more user generated content such as social media updates and personalised search from Google, and Flickr content in Bing Maps and an apparent focus on travel indicated in their PR, how much value can Yahoo! provide as just a portal?

Tags: , , , , , ,

Bing Powering Facebook’s Search

February 7, 2010 in Online, Search, Search Engines by Anthony | 2 comments

Bing has had a relationship with Facebook since 2008, and it has just become more involved. The latest announcement regarding Bing’s relationship to Facebook appeared on Bing’s blog on the 5th of this month.

Briefly, web search through Facebook will continue to be developed, including the integration of more of Bing’s features, and this will be rolled out both in and outside of the USA. Facebook will provide all display advertising within their site; however, Microsoft will continue to provide the search ads. In the whole post, it is the following paragraphs that I find the most interesting:

Bing will continue to exclusively power the web search results on Facebook. This change will also enable Microsoft to continue its focus on driving strong performing campaigns across our own social media and communications tools, including Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail, and via rich content environments across MSN and Xbox Live.

This is an exciting time for us as we continue to work with Facebook on great new experiences for customers. As you know, Bing has been very focused on helping customers make important decisions. We believe that counsel from family and friends can be a big part of that process. Going deeper in web search experiences with Facebook, in addition to the collaboration we announced last October about bringing public data from Facebook’s API into the search experience, will enable us to do great things together for our customers.

By providing Facebook with its websearch functionality, Bing can get around the strong Google brand, and get its search tools in front of people where they already are, rather than attempting to change existing habits the hard way. Bing’s features are comparable to what Google provides through their search experience, and Bing’s intent to become a decision engine and their integration of Wolfram Alpha has a lot of potential.

When you stop and consider the social networks that Microsoft is already heavily invested in, working with Facebook makes a lot of sense. The quote: “…bringing public data from Facebook’s API into the search experience…” is interesting in what it points to. Google is leveraging their own social data through Gmail, Google Reader, etc, to further enhance their own search results, and to provide a better ad product.

How Bing will use the data is collects from Facebook will be very interesting. As a recommendation engine, Facebook is incredibly effective, and the volume of data that they collect is very cool, or very scary, depending on your views. Data mining how links, information, video and photos are shared, tagged and recommended would be invaluable for Bing. Between these announcements and the development of Google Social, search will be a very different place in five years time, at the latest.

It is very silly to write off Microsoft too quickly. While they did release Vista and they have gone through anti-trust litigation, they still have considerable resources, and large companies can still be creative and agile.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

The Yahoo! Microsoft deal

August 4, 2009 in Advertising, Online, Search, Search Engines by Anthony | No comments

This week saw a significant change in the search market place. A deal was announced that would see Yahoo! search being powered by Bing, and Yahoo! Search Maketing switch to Microsoft’s Adcenter . Soon, this will also mean that what I wrote in “Obvious Paid Search Tips” will be out of date, and the answer to “Hands up everyone who cares about what Yahoo does” is more or less no-one. In terms of something that matters, this will increase interest in ranking well in Bing and, at least outside of Australia, there will be more competition within Adcenter.

Adcenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing

The merging of two Pay Per Click market places will increase internal competition. With more participants in the market and a reduction in available inventory, the cost of traffic will increase. Account management will be more efficient with this consolidation, and the volume of available traffic will increase too.

However, we won’t see this locally, as bidding for Australian traffic through Bing and Yahoo! is done via Yahoo! Search Marketing (Formally Overture, formally Goto, etc). What we will get instead, based on information to date, is an eventual change in the platform we use.

Why People will care more about rank in Bing

With Microsoft powering Yahoo!’s search results a good rank in Bing will mean even more traffic. Most decisions on how to allocate SEO resources are influenced by reported search queries and Google’s domminance within this metric. As a result, a lot of SEO activity online is focused on building for Google. It is seen as the only engine worth building for, as it will return the most for the investment of resources. With a ranking in Bing about to appear for more queries, and the deal generating more awareness, this may drive more interest and activity.

Still more to come

There has been a lot written, and some very in-depth, on this deal over the last week. There are going to be even more blog posts and press releases to follow. The fate of Yahoo!’s other search products has not been revealed yet, and there are other areas that still need to be clarified. One thing that can be taken for granted now is that a lot of people are going to be auditing the size of their brand and industry’s query space, and the rankings of their sites in Bing.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Bing in Australia, a few weeks on

June 27, 2009 in Online, Search, Search Engines by Anthony | No comments

Bing has been live in for a few weeks now, and it is time to look back and see what has changed. In short, not much. I have noticed a small dip followed by a spike in traffic on a mature site I work with. The dip in traffic was matched by a drop in terms for which the site was visible. I can only assume that the increase in traffic is due to both the increased attention Microsoft has drawn to their new search engine, and an increase in the terms that the site has appeared for.

Interest in Bing

On another domain I have noticed that terms related to Bing and Bing.com.au have produced a little traffic. This is only to be expected due to the increased interest in the search engine.

SERP reshuffle

One thing that I noticed that is worth watching are changes in the order of sites on the Search Engine Results Pages. For a few of the terms that I have been watching, the top three or four results have remained fairly fixed since lauch. However there has been a bit of movement amoungst the mid-page results. This was even evident on terms where the level of SEO activity can be assumed to be low, and with static sites.

Bing and the Search takeaway

It is simple; there is a lot to be learned right now in how the Search Engine Results Pages have been changing for low competition terms. For now, the changes on these kinds of SERPs are more likely the result of spider and algorithmic activity rather than general updates or targeted optimisation.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Search, SERPs & Bing.com.au

June 6, 2009 in Advertising, Online, Search, Search Engines by Anthony | No comments

There have been a number of changes hitting the Internet since May in search. Google has released a number of new tools, and there are now approximately one and a half new search engines. This post is about the new half a search engine.

Bing.com
The search engine kind-of-formally-known-as-but-not-the-same-as Live.com has finally arrived, and it is now called Bing.com. There has already been a lot written so far, and some very good articles covering everything from usability through to SEO. I am not going to try to replicate what has been said else where, just add my own observations.

Bing.com vs Bing.com.au
For a number of searches there seems to be a few differences between the main and the geographically localised indexes. When I did a few brand searches, I found that Bing.com.au was returning a different SERP than Bing.com. The most dramatic difference was where a new site was not listed at all in the localised version, while it was visible in the main, for both a search on the site’s name and using the ‘site:’operator . Site descriptive text appeared to vary across the two versions of Bing.com too. With our own sites, this indicated a difference in the age of the information that Bing.com was displaying. There were also a few interesting things observed regarding the treatment of hash tags in site links.

Bing.com ads & additions
Bing.com’s launch is being supported by a monstrous media budget, and will shake things up a little in the search landscape. I personally do not think this will change things too fundamentally. This is no real reason not to keep an eye on it though, as things can always change, and to completely ignore Microsoft’s search engine means that you are ignoring a significant slice of the market. In terms of search, I think it is going to be interesting to watch the localised indexes once they integrate newer information and watch the effect that this has on the SERPS.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,