Jun 11, 2013 at 5:32pm ET by Amy Gesenhues

Bing Maps announced a number of new additions today, including a more expansive collection of Bird's Eye Imagery locations, new Venue Maps and a Report a Problem feature. According to Bing, the search engine has published 1,452,948 sq km of Bird's Eye images from around the world with the largest collection posted today, offering users the chance to explore locations from Rome to Toledo, Ohio: Bing Maps also boasts more than 4,700 Venue Maps in over 59 countries, allowing users detailed views of specific points of interest, like amusement parks, zoos, and sports arenas. On [...]

Bing Relaunches Places For Business

Apr 25, 2013 at 12:29pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Bing announced they have relaunched the Bing Business Portal under a new name, "Bing Places For Business." The change doesn't currently do much with your listings, outside of move the location of where you manage your business Bing Maps listing to bing.com/places. It also removes some features that were available in Bing Business Portal including: Ability to creating deals Features to add coupons Print QR codes Create your own mobile sites Ability to create and print collateral Bing did say that this is the first step in their "effort to provide you with all the tools you need [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local

14 Ways Facebook Homes In On Local Search

Apr 15, 2013 at 10:15am ET by Andrew Shotland

With the announcement of Facebook Home, Facebook has pushed the accelerator on its local mobile strategy, which was already in high gear, thanks to Facebook Local Search and its big brother, Facebook Graph Search. By the end of 2013, I expect the social media giant to further strengthen its hold as the #2 local search app; so, it might behoove local marketers to get a handle on exactly how their businesses are showing up in Facebook these days. There are numerous ways that local business data makes it into Facebook, including: "Link" buttons on local business sites "Share on Facebook" [...]

Bing Maps Adds Variety Of Hi-Res Image Improvements

Feb 28, 2013 at 2:41pm ET by Matt McGee

Bing Maps has announced a series of updates to its high-resolution imagery, including expanded coverage, better mapping of ocean floors, cloud filtering and more. The prime features that Bing is touting involve what it calls "top of the world" imagery -- those hi-res, top-down images. Improvements there include: Cloud cover filtering: Bing processes its base satellite imagery and reduces cloud cover in areas where views are often blocked by persistent cloud cover. Bing's example photos of Oahu show how that works: Another improvement involves the addition of ocean topography from [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local | Top News

The Mysterious Relationship Between Bing Business Portal And Nokia Prime Place

Dec 6, 2012 at 8:09am ET by Greg Sterling

People have strongly criticized Google for confusing local marketers by having two places to update and enhance local business information (Google Places, Google+ Local Pages). But there's also something confusing about what Microsoft appears to be doing in local listings management. The company appeared to be trying to establish the Bing Business Portal as the definitive place to claim, correct or enhance local business information on Bing. But Microsoft's relationship with Nokia has complicated things. Nokia has a comparable local listings on-boarding mechanism called "Nokia Prim [...]

Trying To Get There From Here: Nokia And Mapquest Launch New Maps Products

Nov 13, 2012 at 9:05pm ET by Greg Sterling

Globally there are arguably four main digital mapping competitors: Google, Apple, Microsoft and Nokia. Google is the clear leader. However Nokia is making a renewed bid to challenge Google's mapping supremacy with a rebranded platform "Here," new APIs, a Google Street View-like offering, augmented reality and new apps for third party smartphone operating systems. Apple is busy trying to fix its recently launched maps and seems to be making some progress. Bing, after aggressively investing in maps for several years, now seems to be outsourcing key parts of its mapping infrastructure to Nokia [...]

Everybody With A Maps App Is Piling On Apple

Sep 26, 2012 at 3:43pm ET by Matt McGee

It's a marketing tactic that's about as old as time itself: When a competitor stumbles, you turn it into opportunity for self-promotion. That's certainly been the case since the Apple Maps app stumbled out of the gate a week ago on iOS 6. Bing is the latest competitor to call for attention. The company published a new blog post today touting its Bing App for iOS -- not because it has any new features, but because "you may be holding a brand new smartphone and wondering which apps have the essential search and mapping functionality you need." Bing wants everyone to know that its existi [...]

iPhone 5 Won’t Change Mobile Search, But Can Nokia?

Sep 24, 2012 at 1:30pm ET by Sherwood Stranieri

With the launch of the iPhone 5, perhaps the most eagerly awaited electronics launch ever, speculation has been rampant on the impact it'll have on the mobile phone market, on Apple's future as an innovator post-Steve Jobs, and on the coolness of the next gadget to get dropped into your pocket. But from a mobile search perspective, iPhone 5 is pretty much more of the same. A more effective version of Siri will be standard in the new phone's iOS 6 - but that was a game changer from the iPhone 4s. iPhone 5 has certainly caused a sales storm, pushing more smartphones into more pockets. B [...]

Confirmed: Amazon’s New Kindle Fire Tablets To Use Bing As Default Search Engine

Sep 7, 2012 at 4:30pm ET by Greg Sterling

Ubergizmo is reporting that Bing (not Google) will be the default search engine for the Amazon browser on the new Kindle tablets. (We were able to confirm this with Microsoft directly earlier this evening.) The original Kindle Fire used Google. Amazon is likely to sell several million of these new devices given their aggressive pricing (partly subsidized by ads). If so, that could provide a boost to Bing, especially in a mobile/quasi-mobile context. There are several alternative browsers currently available for Kindle Fire/HD including Opera, Maxthon and Dolphin. I would anticipate tha [...]

Bing Completes “Global Ortho” High Resolution Imagery Project For Continental US

Aug 30, 2012 at 12:32pm ET by Greg Sterling

Back when Bing Maps was called Microsoft Virtual Earth (2006) the company bought Vexcel, a US Defense Department contractor that specialized in high resolution aerial photography and automated 3D image rendering. That acquisition became the basis of Bing Maps' subsequent ambitious aerial imagery and 3D mapping efforts. Microsoft then improved upon the camera that Vexcel had developed. In 2010 Microsoft embarked on what it calls its Global Ortho (GO) project. For the past two years Bing has been "collecting every square inch of the Continental United States and Western Europe at 30cm resolut [...]

Bing Previews Rich Search Experience For Windows 8

Aug 16, 2012 at 11:01am ET by Greg Sterling

Windows 8 is almost ready to hit the market. When it does it appears that it will deliver a new more "immersive" search experience, via Bing. In the video at the bottom of this page, Microsoft's Stefan Weitz demonstrates that new experience on a Microsoft Windows 8 tablet (presumably a Surface device). Windows 8 Bing appears to be very fast and it's highly visual, one of the most appealing aspects of the Bing experience. From my vicarious perusal of the materials the most compelling new feature appears to be what Microsoft/Bing is calling "snap." Initially, search results appear in a gri [...]

Bing Adds Boatload Of New “Venue Maps” For International Markets

Jun 28, 2012 at 2:23pm ET by Greg Sterling

Microsoft announced today, that in conjunction with Nokia, Bing has added "more than 2,700 venue maps" in North America, Europe and Asia. You can access them online at Bing.com/maps ("explore venue maps"). In the US and UK markets venue (indoor) maps are also available on Windows Phones and through the Bing app for the iPhone. The following are the categories of venue maps on Bing (numbers indicate coverage in the US): Airports (85) Amusement Parks (1) Casinos (25) Community Centers (1) Convention Centers (2) Hotels (2) Malls (1370) Museums (1) [...]

Bing Maps Introduces 38 Million Sq Kilometers Of New Satellite Imagery

Jun 26, 2012 at 12:57pm ET by Greg Sterling

As the "mapping wars" heat up Microsoft is introducing a huge new body of satellite imagery into Bing Maps. It's not clear whether any of this will extend to mobile given the apparent substitution of Nokia Maps for Bing in Windows Phone 8. The new imagery covers vast amounts of land on almost every continent. According to the Bing blog post, "The total area covered in this data release is nearly 38 million square kilometers." The company says that this single update constitutes more data (165 terabytes) than all the previous releases combined (129 terabytes). Bing also said that its [...]

Yelp Elevated By Apple Relationship, Second Only To Google In Local Importance Now

Jun 25, 2012 at 10:08am ET by Greg Sterling

We're starting to see what Apple Maps will look like as well as the features it will contain, among them check-ins on Yelp. At the same time it's becoming clear how important Yelp now is in the world of local and Local SEO through its Apple relationship. Yelp has always been important. However the site is now second only to Google in terms of its importance -- if not its equal. Yelp's Huge New Visibility On the iPhone 4S Yelp provided reviews for nearby local businesses found by Siri, in a generally mediocre local search experience. Though Yelp was the source of the content (or some of the c [...]

Microsoft Integrates More Nokia “Infrastructure” (Traffic, Geocoding) Into Bing Maps

May 25, 2012 at 11:38am ET by Greg Sterling

Slowly Bing is handing over more of its mapping "back end" functions to Nokia, as part of the deal that brought the two together for the Lumia-Windows Phone partnership. Yesterday Microsoft announced that in 24 countries, including the US and UK, Nokia (Navteq) will be delivering traffic data to Bing Maps. The company also said that it would start using Nokia’s geocoding services in several (unnamed) countries to improve directions. In May last year I wrote Bing Maps To Be Powered (Replaced) By Nokia? A source argued to me that over time Nokia would gradually replace most of the [...]

Analyst: Mobile To Overtake PC For Local Search By 2015

Apr 20, 2012 at 5:45pm ET by Greg Sterling

Analyst firm BIA/Kelsey has projected that by 2015 there will be more local searches coming from smartphones than PCs in the US. It's a bold prediction and one that has logical merit: smartphone search volumes are growing faster than search on the PC. While local search is at least 20 percent of total queries on the PC (per Google) it's at least 40 percent of smartphone queries, also according to Google. Mobile vs. PC Local Search Volumes (BIA/Kelsey Forecast) Source: BIA/Kelsey (2012) In some categories such as restaurants and travel, mobile searches represent 15 - 20 percent [...]

Microsoft Makes Venue Maps More Visible On Bing

Apr 17, 2012 at 9:49am ET by Greg Sterling

Microsoft has introduced a number of improvements to Bing Maps, chief among which is making "venue maps" more obvious. Microsoft says there are roughly 900 venue/interior maps on Bing focused primarily on "malls, airports, casinos and shopping districts." Google has a similar initiative but it's focused on Google Maps for Android for the time being. Below is a comparison of Bing's Mall of America interior map and Google Map's version of the same site (the Android version offers the interior the PC version does not): Clearly the Bing experience above is more desirable. In New York [...]

Bing Maps Updates Map Pins, Adds Drag & Drop Routes & More

Mar 15, 2012 at 9:40am ET by Barry Schwartz

The Bing Maps Blog announced several enhancements to Bing Maps. In summary, the changes include: A refresh to the Pushpin buttons and Popup menu Transit symbols and icons were improved Added sharing options to transit directions Ability to now drag to modify your route The explore venue maps option is easier to find The most visible change is the first, the pushbuttons and popup menu changes. The blue pushpins are standard search results in the maps, the orange pushpins are results you saved to your maps. When you hover your mouse over a pushpin, you see the name of the loc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local

Microsoft’s Photosynth App Goes Worldwide After 6 Million US Downloads

Mar 12, 2012 at 2:59pm ET by Matt McGee

Microsoft's Photosynth iOS app, which has been available to US users for almost a year, is now available worldwide and includes a couple updates. In its blog post today, Microsoft says the app has passed six million downloads since its US-only launch last April. The app is now in version 1.1.3 and is available to iOS users around the world. It includes performance tweaks specifically for iOS5 users and adds Twitter sharing, too. Previously, photo panoramas could be shared on Bing Maps and Facebook. If you're not familiar with Photosynth, it's an underrated product that makes it almos [...]

Bing Testing New, Google-y Local Search Results

Mar 1, 2012 at 1:02pm ET by Matt McGee

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the folks at Bing Local are paying Google a very nice compliment with a new display for local search results that looks quite a bit like what Google often shows. As first spotted by BrightLocal.com, Bing's new local search results no longer consistently show a "pack" of businesses listings and map at the top of the page, above all of the regular organic links. Instead, with the new display, Bing shows a mix of local results: The "pack" of listings may appear anywhere in the search results, not just at the top of the page. The map appears [...]

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