Search Engine Land » Microsoft: Bing

Bing Testing New Search Results Design

Barry Schwartz — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:43:03 +0000

Bing is testing a new design for the search results layout. The new design seems a lot cleaner, fresher and more organized compared to the older design.

Jason Hart tipped us off listing out the key differences:

Vertical tabs removed
Top and bottom search boxes widened
Search button icon changed
Several links removed from header
Location information no longer displayed
Icons used instead of text for rewards and preferences
My smiling face added to the page instead of just my name
Related searches moved from left rail to under the search box

Here is a picture of the new design:

Here is a picture of the old design:

Bing Webmaster Tools Adds Markup Validator

Barry Schwartz — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:35:55 +0000

The Bing Webmaster Blog announced they have added a new feature to the crawl section named Markup Validator.

To access this new feature, login to Bing Webmaster Tools and click on the “Crawl” tab. Then on the right side or bottom left side there is an option to click on “Markup Validator.”

Duane from Bing said that while not all code validation issues have an impact on your web page from loading or rankings, “having the syntax incorrect can affect our ability to use the data as you intend.”

The tool scans for:

Here is what the results can look like:

Yandex Joins Bing, Yahoo In Using Nokia-Navteq Map Data

Greg Sterling — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:28:14 +0000

Russian search giant Yandex announced that it will be licensing data from Nokia-owned Navteq to offer better and more comprehensive maps coverage around the world:

Yandex . . . has purchased a license for digital maps supplied by the leading global location content provider, NAVTEQ. These digital maps will be used in the development of a detailed world map for the Yandex.Maps service.

NAVTEQ has provided Yandex with maps from all over the world, including highly detailed maps of Europe, North America, Australia and developed countries in Asia. These maps show intercity motorways, urban traffic networks, streets and buildings. Yandex.Maps will gradually add new content both to its desktop version and to its mobile application that supports all major platforms. Using the Yandex.Maps API, website owners can embed maps of various countries into their resources.

The company has been running a test with Navteq data in Turkey. Above is an image from Yandex Maps (pre-Navteq) of the San Francisco Bay Area. Yandex now joins Bing and Yahoo in heavily or totally relying on map data from the Nokia subsidiary.

The reliance of major search engines like Bing, Yahoo and Yandex on Navteq for mapping data sets up a kind of global divide of sorts among mapping sites “powered by” Navteq and Google Maps (and those in its network). There are other, independent mapping providers out there like deCarta as well.

Yandex recently lead a $30 million round in independent search engine Blekko. Yandex operates in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Turkey and has a presence in Palo Alto, where its Yandex Labs is based.

Related Entries

Major Entertainment Groups Accuse Google, Bing Of Directing Users To Illegal Content

Matt McGee — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:33:40 +0000

Several major UK entertainment industry groups are accusing Google and Bing of directing searchers to illegal content, and have proposed a “Code of Practice” for how search engines can better encourage consumers to locate legal content on the web. The groups are also calling for the UK government to help oversee how well the search engines administer the recommendations listed in the Code of Practice.

As The Guardian reports, the groups involved in the proposal include the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the Premier League, the Publishers Association and a TV/film trade group called the Pact. The groups’ suggestions are spelled out in a nine-page document that became public after a Freedom of Information Act request.

The Piracy Problem

The entertainment groups say it is “trivially easy for UK consumers to find and access illegal entertainment content via search engines.”

On September 26 2011, BPI made test searches on Google for the name of each of the UK’s top 20 singles and albums, followed in each case by the word “mp3″ (the dominant legal and illegal file format for digital music). On average, 16 of the first 20 Google results for charts singles and 15 of the top 20 search results for chart albums linked to known illegal sites.

The report also cites a Publishers Association study that involved searches on both Google and Bing for the 50 bestselling books during the last week of April 2011. In that study, “Google returned an average of 41% non-legal links in the top ten (first page) results” and “Bing returned an average of 21% non-legal links in the top ten (first page) results.”

Search Engines Code of Practice

The report suggests a Code of Practice for search engines that includes the following:

assign lower rankings to sites that “repeatedly make available unlicensed content in breach of copyright”
prioritize (i.e., give better rankings/visibility to) websites that “obtain certification as a licensed site” for content downloading
stop indexing websites that are subject to court orders and create “procedures to de-index substantially infringing websites”
improve the “notice and takedown” system and ensure that searchers aren’t sent to illegal sites via suggested searches, related searches and suggested sites
ensure that search engines don’t advertise illegal sites, place advertising on them, or profit from selling keywords related to illegal sites
ensure that they don’t profit from selling mobile apps that “encourage infringement”

Google declined to comment to the Guardian.

The company faced similar pressure in December when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) scolded Google and suggested that the company’s search algorithm be changed to better fight online piracy. Even Congress has discussed whether Google should favor legal sites in its search results.

Google did extend an olive branch of sorts in the U.S. when it launched the Google Music store in November. Earlier last year, Google also began removing some piracy-related terms from its Instant Search product.

Bing’s New Ad Campaign: Bing Is For #Doing

Matt McGee — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:29:01 +0000

Bing is set to launch a new ad campaign this weekend that includes a subtle change from its previous messaging.

Rather than promoting the idea of making decisions, the new campaign is about people doing interesting things and uses the slogan, Bing is for #Doing. More specifically, the new TV campaign focuses on winter sports athletes and will include freeskier Bobby Brown along with snowboarders Kaitlyn Farrington, Gretchen Bleiler and Kevin Pearce.

Pearce, who’s now returning to action after a brain injury forced him to miss the 2010 Olympics, is the subject of the first TV commercial, which will air during the NFC Championship footbal game on Sunday and during the upcoming X Games.

The athletes’ stories will air on TV, and will also be promoted online via social media campaigns.

Nokia Now “Powering” Bing Maps

Greg Sterling — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:50:16 +0000

In May of last year I had a conversation with someone who told me that Nokia Maps (Navteq) would effectively replace the infrastructure behind Bing Maps. I was surprised to say the least and wrote about it in a story entitled Bing Maps To Be Powered (Replaced) By Nokia?

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.

Related Entires

Bing Tests New Bottom Home Page Bar

Barry Schwartz — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:26:04 +0000

Paul from WebRanking noticed that Bing is testing a new bottom bar with more graphically interesting information and media. The new bar replaces the existing bar by adding a Popular Now, Weather, Image and Video boxes.

Here is a picture of the new box from Paul:

Here is a picture of the old box:

Google & Bing Have “Won A Major Victory” Over Content Farms, Study Says

Matt McGee — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:41:52 +0000

Search engines have “won a major victory” in their battle against so-called content farms. So says the current issue of New Scientist magazine, in an article that’s also available online.

New Scientist asked University of Glasgow computer scientist Richard McCreadie to study 50 search queries that are “known to be a target of content farmers.” One example query given is “how to train for a marathon.” McCreadie studied those queries in both March and August, and the magazine says “the results show that Google and Microsoft have won a major victory” against content farms.

The results are striking. In the case of the marathon query, sites that contained lists of generic tips, such as “invest in a good pair of running shoes”, were present in the top 10 in March but had disappeared by August, while high-quality sources, such as Runner’s World magazine, now appear near the top. Similar trends were found throughout the 50 queries.

The article doesn’t offer much more in the way of details, unfortunately.

Although the study looked at both major search engines, it’s Google that’s been waging the content farm battle much more actively than Bing. That dates back to the initial launch of the Panda update on February 24th of this year. Read the stories below for more background.

Banned Holiday Deal Sites Return To Bing

Danny Sullivan — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 23:22:11 +0000

Holiday deal sites that Bing banned from its search listings just before the busy shopping days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday have now been allowed to return. They include a site run by the group that created the entire Cyber Monday concept.

Banned: Not Your Usual Suspects

We reported previously how the sites had gone missing, something Bing described as keeping with long-standing policies against “thin” content but which came out-of-the-blue to some site owners.

The banned sites included CyberMonday.com, which is run by Shop.org, the group that created the entire Cyber Monday concept.

Also banned were BlackFriday2011.com and CyberMonday2011.com, which provided content to Yahoo Deals. Yahoo is one of Bing’s strategic partners. The Yahoo site itself, ironically, wasn’t banned.

Several of these sites had top listings were not deemed to be spam by Google, which has been on a campaign to remove content not deemed to have enough substance to it. Indeed, some of them had top listings with Google.

Now, despite being deemed to thin, several of these sites have returned to Bing. CyberMonday.com is back, as is BlackFriday2011.com. CyberMonday2011.com remains banned.

Algorithm Now Deems Them No Longer Questionable

Why the change? Bing sent this statement:

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are notorious times for spammers, and during this time Bing’s spam classification algorithm picked up this spam pattern and heightened its criteria.

Bing took proactive action to protect our users by removing questionable domains.

In an effort to protect our users some questionable domains may have been demoted or removed that some may consider legitimate sites.

We have since revised our algorithm which has led to some previously blocked sites returning to the index.

Really An Algorithm Change?

A search engine’s algorithm, an automated computer process, is like a recipe that measures many different factors to determine what content should rank well, as well as what to ban (watch our video here about this).

This algorithm change at Bing didn’t seem to weigh many factors. Instead, the change simply seemed to be that Bing banned any site that had the words “black friday” or “cyber monday” in their domain name, rather than an analysis of the content itself, to decide if it was too “thin” to retain.

Bing, however, did reconfirm to us that an algorithm was involved.

Bing Denies Favoring Itself

Several of those dropped have wondered if it was all part of an attempt by Bing simply to drive more traffic to a special section of Bing Shopping that was ranking (and still does) in the first page of listing for searches at Bing for black friday and cyber monday, like this:

Bing denied the move was designed to help itself:

Bing did not replace algorithmic results with its own sites.

Since its inception Bing has offered verticalized content like shopping and travel if it helps address a user’s intent.

These Instant Answers are available for a variety of topics and scenarios, such as shopping, checking stock prices, or stats for athletes.

More Information

For more background on the removals, including how it might help Google with accusations that it has banned shopping sites simply to help itself, see our past articles below:

Two New Bing UI Tests Spotted

Matt McGee — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:12:12 +0000

The folks at Liveside.net, an independent blog that covers Microsoft’s online efforts, have posted screenshots of two new Bing user interfaces that some of their readers have seen recently. In my searching this morning, I wasn’t able to see either UI while doing about 5-6 different searches.

Liveside calls the first one a “Metro style” — it takes the daily photo and, rather than show a bit of across the entire header, boxes it in the upper left behind Bing’s logo. The rest of the header looks (to my eyes) like Google’s current search bar area.

Liveside’s reader explains that the above UI was only visible on Bing’s “Web” tab, and that other tabs reverted back to the site’s current/standard look and feel.

The second new UI is much more spartan. The daily photo is gone, as are all signs of color in the header — it’s pure black-and-white.

As with any UI test at Bing (or Google or anywhere else), there’s no guarantee that either of these designs will ever advance beyond the test stage.