The “Local Paid Inclusion” service launched officially today. The site’s home page pitches:

Local Paid Inclusion is a Google, Yahoo and Bing contracted service and is offered as an approved official program in cooperation with those search engines.

Local Paid Inclusion promotes a local business’ profile page, like those found in Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local, into a top position on the search result page for up to 30 keywords per profile page.

This is a NEW program offered by Google, Yahoo!, Bing and 18 other major directories and indexes that places a business profile into a premium area above all other local profiles. Combine this with all of your other optimization programs to maximize your traffic.

What this means is local businesses that participate can essentially pay for the top local ranking position!

That copy reads like the type of email I’d normally delete as spam, if my spam filter didn’t catch it first. But since the service is backed by Bruce Clay, Inc. — a long-standing company in the SEO space — it really causes a double-take.

Clay dropped me an email late yesterday saying the service was going live, but I missed that (I have a lot of email I’m getting through) until some of the fireworks on Twitter erupted after his Facebook post went up and a story that Search Engine Watch did about the new service appeared

But Bing tells us:

Bing has no interest in paid inclusion into the local algo that artificially impacts ranking of algo results…. Microsoft does not have an agreement with UBL today.

UBL, for Universal Business Listings, appears to be a company that Clay is working with on the Local Paid Inclusion product.

As for Google, it tells us:

We are not working on any program that enables a site to pay to increase ranking in organic search results.

I’ve asked Clay for a further explanation, and we’ll update, when we hear more.

Postscript: Clay’s told me that he’s taken down the site while he investigates things further with UBL. Again, we’ll update, when we hear more.

Suffice to say, the claims are pretty unbelievable to me. I’ve also been seeing a lot of discussion about this on Twitter. So, in hopes of perhaps calming some concerns….

The idea that any one of these search engines would guarantee placement outside of their clearly marked advertising areas is pretty far-fetched. It’s not the way they’ve operated. The idea that all three would unite to do this in cooperation with an third-party company? Crazy.

So anyone believing this, or worrying about it, I’d relax. The denials above should be enough to do that, but they clearly aren’t for some people. But rather than the search engines having gone insane, it’s more likely there’s some massive confusion going on between UBL and Bruce Clay, Inc.

I get the impression that UBL — which I’ve never looked at closely — may provide data into local listings at the major search engines. Many companies do this type of thing. It doesn’t provide them any types of super-ranking powers. Some companies may try to stretch these type of relationships into some sort of endorsement by the major search engines. They shouldn’t be taken that way.

I get the impression (and this is solely my impression from afar, looking at all this), that Bruce Clay, Inc. is confused about what UBL can actually provide.

The idea that any company is going to guarantee an organic result simply makes no sense. It would be especially tricky in the local space. Google’s local results change significantly based on the city someone’s searching from. It literally becomes impossible to guarantee any ranking in that type of situation.

Postscript 2: UBL has posted:

Universal Business Listing denies any association with articles and news reports about a “paid inclusion” business listing service. The company has made no such announcements or claims, particularly in regards to Google. It has no product announcements pending.

Bruce Clay Inc is a reseller of UBL’s existing business listing syndication service and is not currently testing any new service from our company.

The site itself didn’t make a connection with UBL over this service, but the Search Engine Watch article did — and Clay himself also suggested a connection when he emailed that he was checking things with UBL. So, I’ll check with them further, too.

Postscript 3: Doyal Bryant, CEO of UBL, has emailed me:

We have no program or service with Bruce Clay providing this type of service as we gave put out in our website.

He also said that he would follow up more tomorrow. So stay tuned.

Postscript 4 (Feb. 1): UBL has updated their earlier statement to add:

UBL continues to innovate and experiment in the area of business listing syndication, and this includes methods to directly feed data into publishers on a free or paid basis. There are several methods of listing submission deployed by UBL and other companies in the field, so this should not be surprising to anyone. Some of these are indeed in an “Alpha” stage of development. However, there is absolutely no discussion under way with Google, nor have we ever represented it so. Furthermore, it would be a massive leap and hyperbole to describe any of this as “paid inclusion” which we would understand to imply preferential placement or ranking

Postscript 5 (Feb. 1): Bruce Clay Inc has now posted a statement, saying:

Late Monday, we announced the service “Local Paid Inclusion,” which we said gives local merchants higher rankings in the Places and local search results in Google, Yahoo! and Bing. We believed that the service offering was finalized between our backend partner and the aforementioned search engines.

So far, we have determined that it is not a released program, made even more complicated by statements of confidentiality agreements that put the kibosh on further discussion. Bruce Clay, Inc. has ceased to engage in Local Paid Inclusion while we dig into confusing and contradicting statements.

We announced what we believed to be a legitimate program where Bruce Clay, Inc. was going to be one of several distributors of this service. Our understanding of this service was that it impacted the sequence of entries within the Places or local results in search engines. And within that separate area of the results, this service would validate local profiles, assuring those entries would naturally result in appearing higher in the local results.

There was misinterpretation of the information surrounding this service; mainly that it would impact the organic search results, instead of only the local results. We take responsibility for an unclear message being announced in an untimely manner, where specifics of the program were not disclosed and the messaging was jumbled.

Bruce Clay, Inc. also takes responsibility for the early promotion of the service Local Paid Inclusion without taking the extra steps to verify these contracts existed as we understood them. For that, we apologize.

We believed at the time that the offering was valid and acted accordingly. We did not collect money at this time, choosing to only set up a notification contact list dubbed “pre-registration” for when the program formally released.

Bruce Clay, Inc. has always been committed to ethical search engine marketing practices that work alongside the values of the search engines: to serve the end user and provide exposure to businesses. This program seemed to be a solid way for local merchants to validate themselves online and to have their companies be found.

At this time, it’s our highest priority to be as clear as possible on this issue with the business and search communities. Bruce Clay, Inc. is prepared to openly discuss this matter as best we can with media and community to be as transparent as possible.

We will make every effort to answer looming questions as soon as we know more, but please understand that we are forced to work within confidentiality agreements, and may be unable to talk specifics.

We are currently working to better understand all of the contractual agreements in place, if any, with those search engines regarding this service.

We also need to thank the various social communities and search marketers for their passion regarding this matter; the voices were heard loud and clear, showing there’s no lack of diligent, inquisitive and knowledgeable marketers and business people in our community.

In the meantime, Bruce Clay, Inc. has withdrawn Local Paid Inclusion pending our further research into this matter. And the site LocalPaidInclusion.com has been taken down while this issue is resolved.

Postscript 6 (Feb. 2): Chris Silver Smith (a board member of UBL) weighs in with his speculation about what happened. He says that the LocalPaidInclusion concept was largely a notion dreamt up and/or predicted by Bruce Clay.

The bottom line: It doesn’t appear that there’s any type of top-ranking program that existed with the major search engines.

How Bruce Clay, Inc. came to believe there was such a program, to the degree it constructed an entire web site to sell it, still remains fairly unclear.

Optimization of business profiles in the Bing Business Portal (or “BBP”) is not difficult nor time-consuming. Microsoft’s newish Beta interfacing for administrating business listing details is actually pretty slick and easy to use.

10 Tips For Optimizing Local Business Listings In Bing

1.  The first key is to claim your business listing

As with other local search engines, having a business owner claim a listing helps to validate the information and establish that the business is active, helping increase “trust ranking” factors.

One of the hardest issues for local search engines and online directories to handle is figuring out which businesses have expired so that they can remove their listings from the databases — so, they have a horror of displaying stale listings to consumers. It’s reasonable to think that businesses which have some signal indicating they’re active will be more likely to be presented more prominently to searchers.

2.  Correct and standardize your basic business contact information

The core contact information needs to be consistently shown in all major places including in Bing Local. The basic contact data is the business Name, Address, and Phone # (a.k.a. “N.A.P.”) — along with the website URL.

3.  Add an image to your listing! 

One striking characteristic of Bing Local searches is how higher-ranking businesses appear to more frequently have images associated with their listings! (See also my earlier articles on optimizing images for local search here and here.) Could be that listings that have images are claimed, and rank higher due to that status, or it could be directly related to the presence of the thumbnails.

Either way, businesses that have pics may have greater chance of ranking well in Bing Local. Example – top two listings for a search for “intellectual property attorneys, chicago, il”:

4.  Set your hours of operation!

Bing Local business profiles actually include a small  sign icon. While I haven’t tested this, I wouldn’t be surprised if businesses might be a little more likely to rank better during times when they list themselves as being open, particularly in mobile search.

Even if it isn’t a direct ranking signal, however, the fact that the profile page gets the bright, attention-getting icon makes it worthwhile as a possibly conversion-increasing element!

5.  Check your categories, and add more where possible!

Business categories like “Plumbers”, “Florists”, and “Attorneys” are core elements involved in local search rankings, yet they can often be wrong or so minimally specified as to detract from the promotion potential that business listings would otherwise possess.

When a local search keyword matches a business’s category — either partially as a “fuzzy match” or as a thesaurus match — the listing is far more likely to rank for it.

6. Go a step beyond categories 

Bing appears to treat “Specialities” similarly to categories or like subcategories, so add relevant specialties.

7. For restaurants, integrate with OpenTable

Integrating with OpenTable to handle reservation scheduling will enable a convenient ”reservations” link to appear on the profile page in Bing.

8.  Add deals to your listing!

Bing appears to have also integrated with Groupon, so if you have a Groupon offer going on, it could appear with your local listing in Bing, too. But, Bing Group Deals may be set up directly within the BBP as well.

9.  Develop citations!

Just as with Google Place Search and Google Maps, Bing Local listings need to have citations and inlinks in order to rank well. Local citation sources which may be influential in Bing include YP.com, Superpages.com, Yahoo! Local, Manta, Judy’s Book, and more. Vertical directories also likely work well here, too, such as Restaurants.com, FindLaw.com, Dentists.com, Contractors.com, etc.

10.  Optimize your local business website

Having a well-optimized local biz website helps all of your external optimizations work hand-in-hand with the on-site optimization. Businesses with good website optimization have a better chance of ranking well and getting found by consumers seeking their products and services.

Bing and other search engines compare listing information against the information found on the website, so keeping the listing data and “N.A.P.” consistent helps reinforce and validate the vital local search criteria.

These basic local optimization tips are pretty obvious to any experienced local marketer, but it’s always amazing how many local businesses fail to check their listings for correctness, consistency and areas where information may be expanded or enhanced.

Sites which follow these simple tips often get an edge over their competition — and, in internet marketing the “early worm” which grabs marketshare first often gets an advantage that extends well into the future. For more details around optimizing local directory profiles, see my earlier article, Anatomy & Optimization Of A Local Business Profile.

The impression I got is that Bing would control the presentation layer and search on top of maps but that the “guts” would come from Nokia/Navteq. At the time of the story Microsoft offered the following comment:

Bing Maps has utilized Nokia content for road data, geo-coding and routing services for several years, through Nokia’s Navteq vector data business, relying on the quality of its data for core location services. The Nokia/MS partnership will enable deeper collaboration in the future.

Pocket-lint now reports, following a conversation with Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, that Nokia branding will soon be showing up on Bing Maps for mobile:

[W]e shall soon be seeing the Nokia brand name within other devices and not just the company’s own phones.

“You’ll starting seeing the word ‘Nokia’ on a map that you get from Microsoft properties over a period of time,” Elop explained to Pocket-lint in an interview behind closed doors at CES in Las Vegas. “Even if you are on a BlackBerry device, who recently said they were going to start using Bing Maps.”

Consumers probably won’t care or even notice but OEMs and the various enterprise partners using Bing Maps might. The context in which it might matter (and the example used in the article) is a situation like that of BlackBerry, which adopted Bing as its default mapping platform last year.

RIM obviously competes with Nokia, which will now get branding on its phones. I suppose however, this is no different than Google branding on maps on the iPhone (which Apple will eventually probably replace).

Nokia spent $8 billion to acquire Navteq in October, 2007 and presumably negotiated this branding deal (and all that it implies) with Microsoft as part of their Lumia-Windows Phone relationship. Nokia is also now behind the new Yahoo Maps.

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Previously, Bing Maps used a routing algorithm named Dijkstra’s algorithm. They replaced it with a new one named “Customizable Route Planning” or “CRP” for short. The new Customizable Route Planning algorithm is “twice as fast” as the Dijkstra’s algorithm, according to Chris Pendleton.

Chris also posted an excerpt of how this new routing calculation algorithm works:

Basic Algorithm. Our metric-independent preprocessing stage partitions the graph into connected cells with at most U (an input parameter) vertices each, with as few boundary arcs (arcs with endpoints in di erent cells) as possible. The metric customization stage builds a graph H containing all boundary vertices (those with at least one neighbor in another cell) and boundary arcs of G. It also contains a clique for each cell C: for every pair (v;w) of boundary vertices in C, we create an arc (v;w) whose cost is the same as the shortest path (restricted to C) between v and w (or in nite if w is not reachable from v). We do so by running Dijkstra from each boundary vertex. Note that H is an overlay [24]: the distance between any two vertices in H is the same as in G. Finally, to perform a query between s and t, we run a bidirectional version of Dijkstra’s algorithm on the graph consisting of the union of H, Cs, and Ct. (Here Cv denotes the subgraph of G induced by the vertices in the cell containing v.) As already mentioned, this is the basic strategy of separator-based methods. In particular, HiTi [19] uses edge-based separators and cliques to represent each cell. Unfortunately, HiTi has not been tested on large road networks; experiments were limited to small grids, and the original proof of concept does not appear to have been optimized using modern algorithm engineering techniques. Our rst improvement over HiTi and similar algorithms is to use PUNCH [5] to partition the graph. Recently developed to deal with road networks, it routinely nds solutions with half as many boundary edges (or fewer), compared to the general-purpose partitioners (such as METIS [20]) commonly used by previous algorithms. Better partitions reduce customization time and space, leading to faster queries. For our experiments, we used relatively long runs of PUNCH, taking about an hour. Our results would not change much if we used the basic version of PUNCH, which is only about 5% worse but runs in mere minutes. We use parallelism: queries run forward and reverse searches on two CPU cores, and customization uses all four (each cell is processed independently).

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The floor plan data has been obtained from all the participating entities, which Google’s Steve Lee says are “very excited” to be a part of the program. Those entities include numerous Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Home Depots and all US IKEA stores. (See the full US list at the bottom.)

Below is a Google-provided screenshot of the Mall of America before interior maps and after:

You’ll Say: “How Did I Live without This?”

The column of numbers in the screen on the right represent floor levels. Google Maps will automatically detect which floor you’re on and show you the appropriate map in a multistory building or location. However you can view maps of different floor levels simply by selecting the desired floor.

Touching the my location indicator will find you on the map — inside the building. Users will be able to see how far they are from bathrooms, escalators and the like. To those who say, “This is nice but unnecessary,” Google’s Lee responds that using the product will win converts. “You’ll say how did I live without this?” he asserts.

Lee told me that at launch Google will have “several hundred million square feet coverage,” but there’s a long way to go before Google delivers all the interior mapping coverage that it would like. To that end there will be a self-service floor-plan upload tool that Google hopes retailers and property owners of all types will use to deliver floor plans for inclusion.

Bing Has “Venue Maps”

Bing has offered similar content online and on Bing Maps for mobile since August. However Bing venue maps don’t dynamically locate you inside buildings or provide floor detection.

Unlike Bing, however, Google is not making the floor plan maps available online at this point. We can assume they will eventually. Interior mapping will be available on Android tablets. And the 3D animations and other capabilities of Google Maps for Android will also be available to the new interior mapping.

One of the biggest accomplishments and useful features is the ability to dynamically locate users within a structure. It will allow them to see how close they are to the nearest bathroom inside Macy’s or how far they are from that better airport restaurant.

Pinpointing Users Inside

Steve Lee told me that Google is essentially using the same techniques (WiFi and cell tower triangulation) to locate people indoors that it uses outside. Outside GPS is also available, but it doesn’t work inside buildings. Google has apparently made some modifications of its approach to render interior location very precisely but it’s not using sensors or any new technology.

During my call with Google I started spinning out various scenarios for these maps going forward: product inventory information, integration with interior photography, ads and deals and so on. Of course Google wouldn’t say anything about any of that. Lee told me that for the time being Google is focusing on simply getting more floor plans into the system.

A Number of Startups Working on Floor Maps

A number of other companies, including Point Inside, Micello and FastMall are also creating interior and mall maps. I asked Google if it was working with any of those companies. Google said no. (They all now become acquisition targets for Google’s competitors.)

Even though these third parties and Microsoft had been working on interior mapping for some time, Google’s entry into the segment will instantly ignite it and make interior mapping a “must have” for companies such as Nokia and even Apple, which has not-so-quietly been building its own mapping capability for the past three years.

Android users will need to update their Google’s Maps apps to get access to the new functionality. There are several videos of the new interior maps in action. We’ll update this post when they become available.

Click here to view the embedded video.

US Launch Partners (full list):

The “Send” link on a Maps search result now has an option to send a business listing to a mobile phone via SMS. This is available to users in the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.

There’s also a “Share” link in the upper right of the map view, and that now has a couple new options that allow sharing of a map link on Facebook and Twitter.

There’s also a new short URL feature that uses Bing’s Binged.it domain. You can see that on Bing’s screenshot above, but I’m not seeing it in action right now on Bing Maps for some reason.

Also rolling out in the next few days is a feature that Bing is calling “Get There.” Bing described this feature as something that will allow for inline editing of directions between two or more points on the map. It’s not really clear how this will work from the description in Bing’s blog post, so we’ll have to wait until the feature rolls out more widely to see how it works.

I was given a demo of the product in Europe early this year and from what I could tell it was every bit as good as anything that Microsoft or Google are doing with 3D imagery on maps. Here’s Nokia’s description of C3 and its technology:

C3 uses modern camera equipment to capture as many as one image per second of the same object from up to 100 different angles. The images are then used to automatically reproduce the shape of the objects with very high accuracy. After that, an image processing software automatically drapes each shape with the texture chosen from the pictures of each object. The same process is being applied for all objects – buildings, houses, trees, and hills – the result is a seamless canvas of 3D-data where the resolution (8 to 12 centimeters per pixel) and quality is consistent over the entire model. This is the secret to C3 maps’ realistic look compared to competitors’ hand-made and cartoonish appearance …

There are a range of European and North American cities already mapped (20 in April of this year) with more coming. Again, this is the third mapping company that Apple has acquired since 2009:

• Placebase (in 2009)
• Quebec-based Poly9, a Google Earth-like product (2010)
• C3 Technologies

These acquisitions together argue that at some point in the next 12 months (or so) Apple will replace some or all of the Google Maps functionality on iOS devices with its own product. Perhaps that will happen with next year’s rollout of iPhone 5, also rumored to be LTE compatible. It might require a faster iPhone to enable Apple’s maps vision to come to fruition.

In March of this year Apple posted a job for an iOS Maps Application Developer:

Come work for the team that revolutionized the mobile technology industry as it continues to define what computing looks like in a post-PC era. The Maps team is looking for a proactive and hardworking software engineer to join our team. Along with excellent skills in object-oriented software design and programming, the successful candidate will have real-world experience developing sophisticated user interfaces. Excellent communication skills are also a must, as you will be collaborating closely with Apple’s peerless human interface team to add new and innovative features.

Apple also said in April that it was “now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.” In June Apple renewed or extended its mapping deal with Google. That appears to be a stop-gap of sorts until Apple is satisfied that its replacement product is ready.

Given how livid Steve Jobs was over Android (see his “thermonuclear war” comment) it’s a safe bet that the change from Google Maps to an in-house Apple mapping platform has been a long-time in the making — much like Alexandre Dumas’ literary Count of Monte Cristo methodically carried out his revenge against those who had betrayed him. It will be interesting to see whether and how Apple improves upon Google Maps when it eventually launches.

Below is just one of many demo videos on YouTube showing C3 capabilities.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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It’s a more “traditional,” email-based daily deal offering vs. the company’s earlier deal products and efforts (which are still ongoing). The new daily deals email capability is being powered by Tippr, another deals vendor that has found success with its white label platform.

Interestingly, in order to receive the Bing Deals emails, users must complete the sign-up process by logging in to a Windows Live or Facebook account. It’s not clear whether there’s any intended personalization behind the scenes — or whether deal purchases will be exposed through the Facebook news feed or Ticker.

The consumer pitch for Bing Deals is very much the same as that being made by scores of other deal providers: local business services at 50% to 90% off. And in respects this is a conventional offering — the earlier search-oriented Bing deals sites were more “progressive” — however there’s an interesting charitable angle that Microsoft hopes will build viral momentum.

Bing is offering what it’s calling Bing Deals for Schools, which allows schools or other non-profits to receive a piece of the money generated by local deal sales. In some sense this follows in the footsteps of “eScrip,” which is used in many places to raise additional funds for schools through ordinary purchases such as groceries.  Microsoft hopes that by connecting deal buying and school fundraising there will be more word of mouth and grassroots adoption of its program.  (There are other deals programs out there that provide a portion of sales to good causes; see, e.g., SharingSpree.)

The program has just started but appears to be available in 12 US cities so far. In this very early stage, the program’s track record is mixed (see below). In fairness, however, Bing Deals hasn’t yet been actively promoted.

There’s a question surrounding the source of these deals. Is Microsoft selling them directly to small merchants or is it sourcing them from a third party such as Tippr — or a bit of both? Tippr CEO Martin Tobias said he was unable to talk to me about specifics. It’s likely that Microsoft isn’t directly selling to small merchants but taking a deal feed from Tippr, just as it takes similar feeds for its other deal products.

I’ve made a similar request for additional information about the new program to Microsoft. If I get a statement or talk to someone I’ll update this post accordingly.

Postscript: Microsoft, through a spokesperson, said that this was not new and that daily deal emails were already available for each of the 12 markets in which Bing Deals operated. However I had not seen this previously.

Microsoft also said that “The vendor selling the deal may vary depending on the market and the deal and can include Microsoft via the Bing Business Portal, Tippr, or merchants via the Bing Business Portal.”

When it launched in April, the Bing Business Portal already had outdone Google with several important features. Now, a new set of tools that Bing added within the past couple weeks puts it even further ahead of Google in many ways — but not all. Here’s a look at what’s new in the Bing Business Portal (BBP).

Group Deals

The BBP has offered a basic Deals tool since April. These are straight-ahead, single customer deals like dollar-based or percent-based discounts. Now, local business owners can create Group Deals that trigger only when a certain number of customers buy. The business owner can create the deal and establish all terms/requirements right inside the BBP.

As the “Revenue” section above shows, Bing is splitting revenue 50/50 with the small business owner. Groupon has historically offered the same revenue split, but some businesses have reportedly been able to negotiate a better rate. (The New York Times recently reported that Groupon is averaging 42 percent of coupon revenues, and says Google reportedly gets 35% from Google Offers.)

Bing’s program is not fully self-serve. Once the merchant creates a group deal in the BBP and submits it to Bing, a Bing “city manager” will contact the business owner within three days to discuss the offer. In a recent briefing call, Bing explained that the city manager may suggest changes to the offer if the original version is unlikely to be a success.

At the moment, Bing’s Group Deals is only available in 12 markets: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Medford, Ore. Bing says Group Deals will eventually be available across the U.S.

Virtual Punchcards (Loyalty Offers)

Another new tool in the Bing Business Portal gives local business owners the opportunity to start a loyalty program using what you might call “virtual punchcards.” Right now, this is only available in conjunction with the Group Deals program, but Bing says it would consider separating the two if there’s enough demand from local business owners who only want to use the loyalty program tool.

The loyalty program requires customers to own a smartphone — thus the “virtual punchcard” name. The customer joins a merchant’s program by scanning a QR code and, once in the program, the customer re-scans the QR code to get a “punch” from the business with each visit/purchase. There’s a bit of friction in the process due to the smartphone requirement, and because the customer may need to hand over his/her smartphone so that the business employee can take care of the “punch.”

As the local business owner is using the BBP to setup a loyalty program, Bing automatically creates printable support material — one PDF is a sign with the QR code for posting in the business, and another PDF offers step-by-step instructions for the business owner to share with employees. There are additional print options available during the creation process, including posters and table tents.

New Options To Create Print Material

That print focus has been extended across the Bing Business Portal. A “Create” sub-menu option that gives business owners the chance to make a variety of print collateral is available in more places than at launch.

For example, from the standard Business tab, users can create two-sided business cards, posters or post cards. From the Events tab, post cards and posters are available. It’s a pretty complete online builder that lets users choose colors, add images and more. (In fact, if the business has uploaded a company logo, the create tool will, by default, initially create a business card design with matching colors.)

The end-result of making a business card is a free, downloadable hi-res PDF that can be sent or taken to a preferred printer. But interestingly, the BBP lets users send poster and post cards designs to a local Office Depot for printing.

After sending the design to Office Depot, the store will contact the business owner by phone to discuss pricing and scheduling.

What’s Still Missing?

In addition to what’s mentioned above, Bing has made several smaller updates to the tools and features that were available when the BBP launched. Add it all together, and Bing offers a much more robust and valuable marketing tool — not just online marketing, either — for small business owners than what Google Places offers.

But there’s at least one key piece that Bing lacks: analytics/data.

Right now, there’s very little information for business owners about how customers are interacting with their Bing local listing. The closest thing is a page that shows how often QR codes created within the BBP have been scanned.

On the other hand, the Google Places dashboard tells business owners how often their local listing was displayed, how often “actions” were taken (clicks to the business website, requests for driving directions) and offers a neutered list of search queries that led the listing to appear in search results. The data is far from great, but it’s something — and it’s more than Bing provides.

That’s one very thing Google Places offers that Bing’s Business Portal doesn’t. I’m guessing that won’t be the case for too long, though.

Finally, some good news for air travelers: Flying gets a little bit easier with Bing’s launch of detailed U.S. airport maps.

Much like the previously announced shopping mall maps, Bing’s airport maps take searchers inside the airport to see things like gate locations, stores and restaurants on each concourse, restroom locations and more.

Searchers will find the airport maps when they come across one of the 42 available U.S. airports on Bing maps. They’re accessible more quickly by searching for the airport name or code (i.e., SEA for Sea-Tac International Airport). And Bing has also added a new “Map” link next to flight status search results.

Here’s a look at how it works for Sea-Tac:

When you first find the airport on Bing Maps, it’s highlighted in blue and a mouseover introduces the new airport map (as shown in the image above).

As you zoom in, Bing shows details such as the proximity of various parking opportunities to the airline’s ticketing counters. That’s especially helpful at bigger airports with large parking areas. In a rush for your Virgin America flight? Now you have a good idea where to park.

As you zoom in further, you get detailed concourse maps -- helpful for finding out where food and restrooms are. And, more conveniently, you learn some airport quirks -- like the fact that gate C10 and C11 are not exactly near each other at Sea-Tac.

Bing has also included a directory of the airlines and shops at each airport. Details of some shops are available when you mouseover their location on the detailed map above.

As I said above, there are currently 42 airports available on Bing Maps now, and Bing says more are on the way. You can see the current list on Bing’s blog post.

There are already a few mobile apps available that offer similar features, and Bing would be wise to port this search feature to its mobile apps/properties as soon as possible. For now, it’s a welcome addition to the desktop search experience.

Now, if only Bing could figure out a way to get us through those TSA checkpoints more quickly….