Google announced its new privacy policy last week – it was immediately met with Congressional concern, fire and brimstone from privacy advocates and some good old fashioned ribbing on Twitter from none other than Steve Martin (yeah, THE wild and crazy guy). This was just another dark cloud in a growing storm of concern regarding the Mountain View search giant. Continue reading “Google, what the (bleep) are you doing?” »
Likely in advance of the upcoming Windows 8, Bing.com appears to be testing a new bar on the home page below the image. I first saw the new homepage on Tuesday, January 10th when I opened Internet Explorer 9. We opened Bing in different browsers, and on different machines, and did not see the new layout. Much like when we see something new on Google, we usually only see it in one browser. Well, I saw it for just 2 days, and now it’s back to the regular homepage. My guess is that they had it up for CES, where they were showing off tablets that were running Windows 8.
Side-by-Side comparison of the Bing.com Homepage.
I’m sure there are plenty of you who are too excited for the NFL Kickoff 2011 to notice any small changes over at Bing.com. Or maybe you are celebrating the new football season by playing some Tecmo Super Bowl 2012 (I highly recommend this one).
Well we’ll have none of those fun and games here at WebRanking. Only serious business for us, and today I’m here to write about Bing, and the subtle new changes to their homepage. This may or may not just be in preparation for their expected HTML 5 homepage, either way, it’s a nice change. Especially for those of you who didn’t know there was a way to actually find out what the image you were looking at actually was. Oh yes, there certainly was.
Bing.com Refreshes Homepage, Launches New Layout
Continue reading “Bing.com Refreshes Homepage, Launches New Layout (Not HTML5 Yet)” »
In a progressive and highly tactical move, Bing has added a small and significant Social feature to their home page: the Facebook “Like” button.
Bing.com gets social, adds the Facebook Like button to the home page
Bing is the first search engine to add the Like feature to their home page. In truth this is probably not even something that Google could do as they do not have any featured daily or consistently changing content that an audience would engage with. However, since Google and Bing have repeatedly tried to mimic the others features, it would not surprise me if Google did copy this implementation and use it for their occasional holiday and event homepage doodle logos.
Today’s post is day 8 of the 31 day Bing Challenge, where I’ve completely cut myself off from Google, to focus on Bing, for the entire month of March, 2011. Since I’m examining Bing’s search tools, features and options this week, I decided to spend today taking a look at the “Narrow By Date” search tool. So far, 8 days down and only 23 more to go.
Day 8: Narrow By Date - Tuesday, March 8th
Often when I am researching a trending topic, I will use a search feature like Bing’s Narrow By Date filter options to find content that is more current. This helps save time in reviewing posts and articles that may contain info that is no longer accurate.
This is not a search tool that is unique to Bing, but it has a few aspects that make different.
Today I completed the 7th day of the Bing Challenge. No Google searching for the entire month of March in order to focus on Bing. This week I’m looking into Bing’s search tools, features and options and today I’m examining their “More Info Box” feature that provides additional linking information. So far, 7 days down and only 24 more to go.
Day 7: More Info Box Search Listing Enhancements - Monday, March 7th
Search engine result pages have changed greatly over the years. Most of the engines in the early days only contained a few things: Linked Page Title, Text Description, Page URL, and maybe a Cache Date and Link if the engine cached the page.
Today’s search engine pages are much different and often contain a mixture of Images, Videos, News Headlines, Maps & Local Listings, Rich Snippets, and Social features such as latest Tweets.
Continue reading “Bing’s More Info Box Search Listing Enhancements” »
In case you missed it, I gave myself a challenge and completely cut myself off from Google to focus on Bing on March 1st, 2011. So as of now, I have been Bing Only and Google Free for over 5 straight days. A small, but significant achievement for a search engine marketer. My goal here is simple: gain a deeper understanding of Bing. I figured that the best way to accomplish this was if I could commit, and stick to, only searching with Bing for a whole month. 5 days down and only 26 more to go.
Last week I spent my time getting to know more about Bing, working through Indexing issues and becoming familiar with Bing Webmaster Tools. This week I am planning on being more organized and will be examining some of their search engine tools and features.
Day 6: “Popular Now” Trending Search Features - Sunday, March 6th
Continue reading “The Bing Challenge Daily Journal Week 2: Search Tools, Features & Options” »
Today is the 5th day of the Bing Challenge where I’ve committed to using Bing only. No searching on Google searching for an entire month. This week I’m getting to know Bing a little better and today I’m taking a closer look at their Webmaster Tools features and reports. 5 days down, 26 more to go.
Day 5: 3 Valuable Bing Webmaster Tools Features & Reports - Saturday, March 5th
While poking around in Bing’s Webmaster Tools today looking for indexing info for our new post that I wrote yesterday, I noticed a 3 nice features, reports and downloadable data sets that I found valuable for SEO.
Continue reading “3 Valuable Bing Webmaster Tools Features & Reports” »
Yesterday, while I was researching our WebRanking Profile in Bing Webmaster Tools, I was served the following alternate header and top navigation format for Bing’s search engine results pages.
Alternate Test Top Header for Bing Search Engine Results Pages.
Continue reading “Bing Testing Navigation Usability with Alternate SERP Format” »
Day 1: Notable Spidering & Indexing Frequency Issues - Tuesday, March 1st
Today being the first day of The Bing Challenge was a busy one with client meetings in Downtown Minneapolis, an hour long webinar on landing page conversion testing, and first of the month client SEM reporting and analysis. Being busy was good because I didn’t have the time to be tempted by Google. Sheesh, this ain’t so hard. Only 30 more days to go!
Continue reading “The Bing Challenge Daily Journal: Week 1 Search Results” »
It’s been almost 2 years since Bing launched in June of 2009. Yea, I know. TWO YEARS. Like many other search engine marketers I waited… and waited… and waited… and continued to wait and wonder if Microsoft’s new engine was going to stick around, or if it was destined to fade away with the likes of Northern Light, Excite, Infoseek, DirectHit and countless others that ended up in the Searching Graveyard.
Well. It’s still here. And it’s bigger than ever.
Recent surveys suggest that Bing powered searches have grown to almost 30% of the total U.S. search market. That is a larger audience than any other search engine has had, in what, 5 years? This is due in large part to the completion of their Search Alliance with Yahoo and the fact Microsoft is a marketing machine. And even though PPC search traffic from the Binghoo merger is currently only coming in at 70% of combined pre-Alliance traffic levels, search marketers now only have to manage a single AdCenter platform.
Continue reading “The Bing Challenge: 31 Days of Google Free Search. Can It Be Done?” »
Hummm. It is Friday afternoon so I guess this falls in line with the timing of most of Google’s tests and new feature roll outs, like when they tested their left side search tool on Friday, April 2nd that was Officially Launched on Thursday, May 6th or when they Tested Olympic Logos in Search Pages on Friday, February 19th.
The following screen shot indicates that Google is testing a new “Related to” pay per click text ad segmentation format in the search results pages. While, IMO, these look a little out of place, they may actually function better for users to help identify ad groupings that may interest them.
New Google Sponsored PPC Text Ads Segmentation for Keyword: Local
Continue reading “Google Testing New “Related to” Sponsored PPC Ads Segmentation in SERPs?” »
Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 marks the 30 year anniversary of when the Pac-Man video game was released. To celebrate this phenominal interactive computing milestone, Google has changed their homepage logo to an interactive one that you can play the Pacman game live, online and right from Google.com. Pretty Cool!
Google PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary Interactive Video Game Logo
Watch a video of me wasting time playing Field Testing this interactive search engine feature:
Google New SERPs Navigation
We first noticed Google testing their new SERPs format back in April.
Since then we have been left to wonder if and when the new search page layout would go live ad if there were any changes that would be made to their format as well.
It appears that the only thing missing from the early tests is the “Not Entirely Unlike” section.
 Test SERP: Not Entirely Unlike |
 New SERPs: Something Different |
 Google's Original TM Logo |
 New Cleaner Looking Google Logo |
Continue reading “Google Officially Launches New Logo and Search Page Layout” »
Ask.com went down this morning for at least an hour with what appears to be a server DNS Failure.
Ask.com DNS Failure
Maybe Ask decided to observe Earth Day by shutting down their website for an hour to save energy. I wonder how many searches were lost saved as a result? 
Continue reading “Ask.com Goes Down on Earth Day, Then Mimics Bing” »
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