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 infrastructure behind Bing Maps. I was very surprised at the time but it appears to be happening.

This mapping integration was allegedly, according to my source, one of the sticking points that caused Nokia to pass on Android as a platform. Google wouldn’t similarly agree to a commingling of Google Maps with Nokia on the back end. However if Windows Phone fails to deliver for Nokia — so far results have been modest — the company may be compelled to embrace Android as a survival move.

Nokia is also behind the new Yahoo Maps. My suspicion is that Nokia hopes to eventually make these third party mapping services part of its local ad network.

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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 or more of overall query volumes. There can be no dispute that mobile search is now a huge phenomenon. But will it eclipse PC local search query volume in three years?

Let’s think out loud a bit, shall we?

50 Billion Local Queries on the PC

Using the Google 20 percent figure as a guide we can estimate that in March there were approximately 3.7 billion local searches on the PC in the US. In the absence of significant month over month growth that would translate into roughly 44 billion annual local queries coming through US search engines on the PC. But let’s assume modest local query growth and say there will be something on the order of 50 billion local queries on search engines in the US in 2012. (The number could be higher of course.)

Now, how many local-mobile search queries are there?

Answering that question depends on whether we include app-based local search (e.g., Yelp, Foursquare, yellow pages apps, Urbanspoon, etc.). Data from comScore, Localeze and 15 Miles finds that half of US mobile consumers (survey respondents) say they use apps at least some of the time for local search. However, we don’t know the frequency or the volume of in-app search because no one is really tracking those numbers today.

Let’s limit the definition of “mobile search” to browser based search through one of the major US search engines. However right now Google represents about 95 percent of the total “mobile search” market in the US.

12 Billion Local Queries on Smartphones

If there are roughly 125 million smartphone owners in the US (50 percent of 250 million mobile subscribers) and a large number of smartphone owners do an average 20 mobile searches per month, then there are something like 30 billion mobile searches annually right now in the US. (Let’s leave out tablets of this discussion.) If 40 percent of that overall mobile search volume is local, that would mean roughly 12 billion annual local searches on mobile devices. (This number may be slightly inflated today.)

We can assume growth in smartphone penetration and some growth in per-person mobile search query volume — though this assumption is a wild card for several reasons. It also may be a bit risky to assume that the percentage of overall mobile search that is local will continue to climb significantly, though it could reach 50 percent (which is what Microsoft says it is today on Bing).

Let’s assume smartphone penetration reaches 75 percent (say 187 million people) and each person does 40 mobile searches per month (doubling our per-person monthly query assumption). That translates into 90 billion annual mobile queries. If the local percentage of mobile search volume grows to 50 percent, we’d have 45 billion annual local-mobile search queries.

That event would get us pretty close to PC-mobile local search parity, if there weren’t dramatic PC local search growth. However a number of factual assumptions must come to pass. And the future is not guaranteed to look like the past.

What If the Paradigm Shifts?

The proliferation of mobile apps (whether native or HTML5) combined with the rise of Siri and other voice assistants could mean that browser-based mobile search doesn’t grow much over time. Google has cited figures of 130 percent year over year mobile search growth. But there are reasons to believe that the current PC search model on the smartphone small screen will be supplanted, at least to some degree in the relatively near future.

More than a couple of years out it all starts to get very speculative, since mobile is evolving so rapidly. However, regardless of whether the BIA forecast comes true in three years — I don’t think it can without including in-app search volumes — it’s certainly directionally accurate. And one day in the relatively near future it’s clear that people will be using mobile devices to find local information as much or more than their laptops and desktop PCs.

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 offers this kind of treatment in and around Times Square. Any area marked in purple contains an interior map or store identification.

This kind of presentation adds utility but also threatens clutter if overused. Another company called CityMaps is taking a similar approach to the above and illustrates the latter danger in my opinion.

Additional changes and improvements being rolled out on Bing Maps include the following:

• Identification of popular businesses and locations (for local discovery)
• Addition of semi-transparent 3D buildings (this is a feature that Google Maps has offered for some time)
• Faster zoom

• 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 location:

When you click on it, Bing makes the pushpin much smaller and brings up more details on the location in a overlay:

I should note that the pushpins and popups dynamically adjust the location and size in order to show you the part of the map you really want to see, instead of covering it up.

The other feature I wanted to highlight was the “drag to modify route” option. You can see it when setting up directions and then by placing your mouse cursor over any part of the route. Drag the green circle and the route will adjust for you.

All the other changes are pretty self explanatory and there are more pictures at the Bing Maps blog.

Related Articles:

• Bing Maps Tweaks Its Navigation
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• Bing Maps Expands Sharing, Editing Options
• Bing Testing New, Google-y Local Search Results
• Bing’s New Airport Maps Aim To Make Air Travel Easier

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 almost brain-dead simple to create photo panoramas without any additional stitching/editing required. The app itself does all the work and the user chooses where the upload/share the final panorama.

The search marketing angle to this is pretty simple: It’s like a do-it-yourself store photo tool for Bing Maps. A local business owner could use Photosynth to create a panorama inside his/her facility, then upload it to Bing Maps. If the imagery is tagged with the name of the location, it’ll show up on the business listing — see the Museum of Flight in Seattle on Bing Maps for an example.

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 with the pack in this display.
• The “pack” may be replaced by blended listings — organic listings with local data blended in as part of the search snippet. The map appears in the upper right of this display, but floats as the user scrolls down the page.

A Microsoft spokesperson gave us the company’s standard reply about search result tests:

“We’re constantly updating and refining the Bing search experience, and before any changes are implemented they undergo intensive testing and experimentation to ensure the best possible user experience. We have nothing further to share at this time.”

Here’s how the new display looks in action, with comparisons to the old/existing local search display:

Old Bing local results: “seattle restaurants”

An 8-pack of listings shows at the top of the search results page.

New Bing local results: “seattle restaurants”

The pack is still together, but it’s smaller and merged in as part of the search results page, not at the top.

Old Bing local results: “richland wa real estate”

A 6-pack of results shows at the top of the page.

New Bing local results: “richland wa real estate”

This is the most similar-to-Google look that Bing is testing. There’s no “pack” anymore. The local listing information is blending in with organic results, and the map in the right column floats as you scroll down the page.

In this screenshot, note that listings 1, 3 and 4 in the organic results point to a Bing Local listing, while listings 2 and 5 point to the business website. Listing four also includes a rating/review from Bing Local; in other searches, Bing shows ratings/reviews from Yahoo Local, Yelp, etc., in that spot.

What’s unclear to me is how widely this test has already rolled out. I emailed a handful of friends who pay attention to local search and several – but not all – are seeing the test.

Essentially the UI has been simplified, colors have been muted and there’s an improved “visual hierarchy” at each level of zoom. It’s challenging for me to specifically tell what’s new on Bing Maps, however. Here’s more from a Microsoft spokesperson:

This week, as an extension of the Microsoft-Nokia partnership, a new joint map design will begin rolling out across Bing Maps, Nokia Maps and Windows Phones. This unified map style will feature key elements from Microsoft’s metro design, including strong typography, improved readability and a clean user interface to help people find and use mapping information more quickly. As part of the update, Bing Maps will also be improving its global mapping coverage in countries such as Egypt, Israel, Venezuela and many others, refreshing the maps with new roads, subdivisions and additional refinements.

The new mapping UI and features will appear on both companies’ PC and mobile sites. While there are still UI and user experience differences between Bing Maps and Nokia Ovi Maps, the look and feel is very close.

Below is comparison of maps on Bing and Nokia in response to the query “San Jose Convention Center,” where I am now at SMX West:

Bing Maps

Nokia Maps

For comparison purposes, here are Yahoo Maps (also powered by Nokia) and Google Maps results for the same query.

Yahoo Maps

Google Maps

The new Bing-Nokia maps are less visually cluttered than Google or Yahoo Maps. But some may equally characterize that as a “washed out” quality. Indeed, the assessment of the new mapping UI for Bing and Nokia will depend on your subjective aesthetic preferences.

Whose maps do you prefer?

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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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