Reimagining search in the AI era: Insights from ex-Bing Search director
Nobody notices when search engines work perfectly. but they notice when they don't – and more wisdom from Stefan Weitz.
Topic: Stefan Weitz
This day in search marketing history: January 22
Google deduplicates featured snippets, plus: Facebook and Twitter signals, blacklisting domains, Wikipedia nofollows links and more.
SearchCap: Bing Talks Search Share, Matt Cutts On Future With Google & Major Drop In Traffic After Loss Of Snippets
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bing: It’s Unlikely That We’ll Take Search Share Away From Google Microsoft’s Director of Search admitted this week that Bing isn’t likely to put a significant dent in Google’s search market […]
Bing: It’s Unlikely That We’ll Take Search Share Away From Google
Microsoft’s Director of Search admitted this week that Bing isn’t likely to put a significant dent in Google’s search market share. Stefan Weitz appeared Tuesday at the Web Summit conference in Ireland, where he told attendees that Bing instead wants to focus on making its search technology an important part of mobile apps and other […]
Microsoft Execs Lay Out Strategy For Growing Bing’s Market Share: “We’re Putting Search Where People Are”
At a Bing Ads Next event in Redmond, Washington yesterday, Microsoft executives outlined the roadmap ahead for Bing and Bing Ads, which powers paid search advertising on both Bing and Yahoo. In discussing the evolution of Bing and the way Micosoft is thinking about search, Rik van der Kooi, Corporate VP, Advertiser and Publisher Solutions […]
At Five Years Old, Bing Has Come Far Yet Has More To Grow
Microsoft’s Bing search engine has turned five this week. There are good reasons for some birthday celebrations at Microsoft. The company has created a solid competitor to Google, grown its market share and created a search platform for other Microsoft products. But when it comes to mindshare, Bing is still far behind rivaling Google as […]
Apple Drops Google For Bing As “Spotlight” Search Provider In iOS 8 & Mac OS X “Yosemite”
Bing has gained another win with Apple, becoming integrated into a new version of Spotlight in Apple’s forthcoming Mac OS X “Yosemite” operating system and in the coming iOS 8 mobile operating system. Spotlight will also tap into a wide-range of search resources similar to how Siri works on iOS. During Apple’s WWDC keynote today, […]
Microsoft: We Don’t Censor Search Outside China
Bing censors search results in China in accordance with Chinese law. But does it do so in the US and elsewhere around the world for Chinese users? That disturbing proposition was raised yesterday in an article appearing in The Guardian. The article asserted that Bing search results for Chinese language speakers in the US were […]
NORAD & Google Launches Rival Santa Trackers; Still No Comment From Santa’s Camp On Which Site Mrs. Claus Will Use
After NORAD announced last week it would be joining forces once again with Bing to track Santa’s whereabouts during the holiday season, NORAD Tracks Santa went live on Dec. 1. Google followed suit today by announcing the return of its own Google Santa Tracker. There’s still no comment from Santa’s camp on which site Mrs. Claus will be […]
“NORAD Tracks Santa” Is Back With Bing For 2013 & Will Santa Tracking Match At Google?
It’s official. NORAD Tracks Santa, the annual Santa tracking effort run by the joint US-Canadian air defense organization, will be using Microsoft’s Bing for the second year to map Santa’s route. But will Google be mapping Santa on a different route, as happened when it ran its own breakaway tracking service last year? There’s hope […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 4, 2013
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: SMX West Starts Next Monday in San Jose; Register by March 10 and Save The clock is ticking! Search Engine Land’s – SMX West begins next Monday in San Jose, CA. […]
Microsoft Says Goodbye To “Scroogled” Ad Campaign
Microsoft’s “Scroogled” ad campaign, which attacked Google over paid inclusion in shopping and Gmail over privacy, is coming to an end. KQED reports that Microsoft will stop TV, newspaper and social media ads promoting the Scroogled message: “That part is about finished,” Stefan Weitz, Microsoft senior director of online services, said on Thursday. Microsoft launched […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 19, 2013
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: ChaCha Defeats Google, Bing And Siri In “Answers Quality” StudyA study published today by Indiana-based Butler University compared the performance of a range of search engines and Q&A sites on mobile […]
Bing Attacks Google Shopping With “Scroogled” Campaign, Forgets It’s Guilty Of Same Problems
Bing is attacking Google over its shift to a pay-for-play shopping search engine through a new “Scroogled” site, pledging that Bing has “honest search.” Great campaign, if it were true. It’s not. Bing itself does the same things it accuses Google of. It’s also another indictment of how little the FTC is doing to protect […]
Bing Offers Own Version Of “Pepsi Challenge” Against Google: “Bing It On”
Surely you remember (or have heard about) the now classic “Pepsi Challenge” ad campaign from the 1970s and early 1980s. Pepsi went around to public venues like shopping malls and offered people blind taste tests of its own caramel colored soda vs Coke. Overwhelmingly people preferred Pepsi to Coke. Microsoft is now trying something similar […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 4, 2012
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: New UK Conservative Party Co-Chair Grant Shapps Founded Google Spamming Business The UK’s Conservative Party has a new co-chair, The Right Honourable Grant Shapps, Member of Parliament for Welwyn Hatfield. Honorable […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 16, 2012
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google: Further Penguin Update “Jolts” To Come; Panda Is Smoother & Monthly Fasten your seat belt, if you’ve been spamming Google. The anti-spam “Penguin Update” will have more jolts in the […]
Bing Previews Rich Search Experience For Windows 8
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 […]
Bing Adds Friend-Tagging To Social Sidebar
Bing has just announced a small tweak to how its Social Sidebar functions — but it’s one that overcomes one of the Sidebar’s true limitations. The change is this: When using the Social Sidebar, you can now tag up to five Facebook friends with whom you want to share your search results. Before this change, […]
Bing Video Update: Larger Previews, Infinite Scroll & Related Content
Microsoft has announced on the Bing Search Blog an update to their video search features. Bing Video added larger video thumbnails when you hover over video results in the search results. They also added infinite scroll when you view videos on Bing Video. Additional search refinements for related content and a large video viewer and […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 19, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Removes Author: Search From Google News You can no longer search for articles from specific authors in Google News. As Barry Schwartz reported this morning on Search Engine Roundtable, using […]
SMX East 2011: The Current State Of Personalized Search
The Current State Of Personalized Search Presentations from SMX East – NYC, NY, September 2011 Personalized search isn’t just a Google thing, anymore. Bing does personalization, too. This session looks at how results are being personalized on both services and what marketers need to consider in a world where searchers all see a different set […]
Bing Bans Holiday Deals Sites, Including One By Group That Created Cyber Monday
Ironically, the trade group that created the Cyber Monday concept had its own CyberMonday.com site lost in cyberspace this week. Lost, that is, if you tried to use Bing to find it. The site, along with some Black Friday deals sites, have been deliberately dropped from Bing as being too “thin” in content. Bing’s Version […]
Bing Still Seeking Magic Formula To Challenge Google & Turn A Profit
Despite making incremental gains in market share, Bing is still searching for the “secret sauce” that will help it challenge Google’s dominance more quickly. That phrase — “secret sauce” — is how a CNN Money article explains what Microsoft thinks will ultimately set it apart from Google. The article describes a recent meeting in which […]
SMX Advanced 2011 Video: Keynote: Confluence of Social Data & Search
Keynote: Confluence of Social Data & Search Presentations from SMX Advanced, June 2011 In the great words of Clay Shirky, “Here Comes Everybody”. Welcome to the social era of search where your friends’ opinions, Likes, and activities help make results more personal and relevant. But do we want it? And why is it such a […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 18, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Study: Insurance, Loan-Related Keywords Are Google’s Cash Cows Insurance-related keywords are the source of 24% of Google’s AdWords revenue, with the highest CPC coming in at a whopping $54.91, according to […]
Exploring The Shift In Search Behaviors With Microsoft’s Jacquelyn Krones
I first met Jacquelyn Krones, a Senior Product Manager from Microsoft, at a search show. A mutual friend on the Bing team, Product Manager Stefan Weitz, introduced her to me and said, “You have to meet Jacquelyn. You speak the same language.” Stefan was right. Jacquelyn started talking about the research project she was then […]
SMX Advanced 2011: Day Two Live Blog Coverage
SMX Advanced 2011 is in the books. Here’s a roundup of the live blog coverage we found around the web from the sessions on day two (today). Advanced Keyword Research Tools — SMX Advanced, BruceClay.com Google Survivor Tips, Outspoken Media Hardcore Local SEO Tactics, Outspoken Media How the Search Alliance is Paying Off: Charts, Tips […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 8, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bing’s “Honey Badger” – An Upgrade To Webmaster Tools This morning at our SMX Advanced conference, Bing’s Stefan Weitz announced “Honey Badger” — Bing’s latest upgrade to its Webmaster Tools. Weitz […]
Bing’s “Honey Badger” – An Upgrade To Webmaster Tools
This morning at our SMX Advanced conference, Bing’s Stefan Weitz announced “Honey Badger” — Bing’s latest upgrade to its Webmaster Tools. Weitz explained that today’s upgrade primarily involves three things: Crawl setting management: users can ask Bing to crawl a website less during busy times of day and more during off-peak hours Role management: set […]
SMX Advanced Liveblog: Social Data & Search With Bing’s Stefan Weitz
Day two of our SMX Advanced conference is set to begin shortly with a keynote session on the “Confluence of Social Data & Search.” Bing Director Stefan Weitz is due to give a presentation/demo and then chat with Danny Sullivan. With 10 minutes to go before we start, I see no evidence of pandas on […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 1, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google +1 Analytics Coming Soon; Here’s What To Expect Although webmasters can install the new Google +1 button on their websites today, it may be a little while before the expected […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 22, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bing’s Read/Write World: An Ambitious Project To Bridge Maps With Movies, Photos, Local Data & More It’s probably not something that you can wrap your head around pretty quickly. It’s also […]
Five Visionaries Sum Up The Future Of Search: Part II
Over the past several months, I’ve been trying to crystal ball what the future of search might look like. I’ve had fascinating discussions with several visionaries in the industry, including Stefan Weitz (Microsoft), Shashi Seth (Yahoo), Hampus Jakobsson (RIM) and John Battelle (Federated Media). In my last column, I started to sum up the overarching […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 15, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Intros New Privacy Controls For Mobile Consumers To date Google has not used the mobile handset UDID “device identifier” to target mobile advertising via its AdSense for mobile and AdMob […]
Could Bing Improve Its Search Results With Google +1?
Here’s a big dose of irony. Could Google +1 buttons or +1 data — which Google uses to improve its search results — come to rival Bing? Potentially. Bing +1, Anyone? The issue came up yesterday during Q&A following the keynote talk by Bing’s director Stefan Weitz at our SMX Sydney conference. An audience member […]
Five Visionaries Sum Up The Future Of Search
For the past several months in this column, I’ve been asking a number of people the same question: Where will search go from here? For the next two columns, I wanted to sum up what came out of those conversations and find the common themes. A Shift In Our Expectations Of Success A number of […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 3, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Ask Launches Local Conversations iPhone App Ask.com noticed some interesting behavior happening on its Q&A iPhone application. People were trying to have “conversations” in the comments area of the app, according […]
Bing Brings Local Deals To Mobile, PC
Bing is introducing deals for mobile (m.bing.com) and the PC. Mobile deals are available for the HTML5 sites for the iPhone and Android. They aren’t yet in Bing’s mobile apps but will be integrated soon according to Microsoft’s Stefan Weitz. The source of deals here is The Dealmap, which is also the principal source of […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 17, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Congratulates Watson On Twitter; IBM Says Thanks Among those watching IBM’s Watson win Jeopardy last night were folks at Google, which just tweeted congrats over to IBM. In response, IBM […]