Not sure if this has hit the media yet, but I just noticed that the map in Yelp is now powered by Bing. It appears it’s not 100% rolled out yet, as different cities give you different engines.

First, fighting words over Hotpot and Content Syndication, now, break ups and going separate ways… next, maybe Google will buy Yelp’s affection back and offer to buy Yelp again.

So, to be clear… companies that fell out of love with Google:

1)      Yelp

2)      Apple

3)      Most television networks

4)      JCPenny…

But hey, if no one hates you, you’re not doing it right, right? Right?

That, and I’m pretty sure Google’s little black book ain’t so little these days.

We are introducing a new column to SearchShots, CEO of Google.

All search marketers, at one point or another, become frustrated with a certain feature, or lack thereof, within a search engine. Or, we secretly wish they were CEO at Google so they could innovate the offering themselves. In either case, this forward thinking doesn’t just happen in Google’s 1.9 billion-dollar building. It happens when a person searches but can’t find. It happens when a search marketer wants to innovate their accounts but is limited by the system.

Every bad experience presents two options:

1) Complain and accept.

2) Think of a better way and voice it. Even better, do it!

We like number 2.

But, enough with the introduction. This innovation is for Search Targeting by Category.

Think about a time where your natural inclination when you hit that search bar was to enter a term, such as “tide”, “foundation”, “stains”, and the like. To you, this makes total sense. To the search engines and other outsiders, this is ambiguous.

You see the results and you’re immediately irritated. They’re not even close to what you wanted. The search engines must be crazy. After all, YOU knew exactly what you meant, so why didn’t the engine?!

Bing’s offering has always been positioned around this concept, and it’s become more prevalent over time. According to Bing, queries made on their engine fall under 155 categories, like Music, Consumer Electronics, and Recipes. TechCrunch’s write-up on the Bing Search Summit breaks down what Bing does with these types of insights:

“To best handle these, Bing has developed 400 “unique visual experiences” depending on the search (in other words, photos, images, and links are presented in different ways depending on the content you’re searching for. Microsoft says that in this respect, it does more than their competition (Google).”

So, what if search engines began breaking this behavior down at scale. And, what if they offered search marketers the ability to target certain (relevant) query categories. It helps the consumer with more relevant results and it helps the advertiser with more accurate targeting. When a consumer is searching for solutions to remove the ketchup stain from the burger shop at lunch, they don’t want to see ads speaking to wood stains for their home. Also, search marketers advertising for food stains don’t want to live in the same marketplace as those advertising for floor staining services thanks to the hefty price tag of a click within the latter.

Google Insights for Search already breaks these down, although the accuracy of these categories is uncertain. Google has started combating this with ‘Related Searches’ and ‘Related to’ to encourage searches to dive deeper into their desired result.

It’s very clear that Google and Bing are traveling down this road; however, many of the improvements have been centered on adjusting the look and feel of the SERP. It’s time to take this a step further and offer advertisers an extra layer of targeting and relevancy.

What are your ideas? We love contributing writers .

Microsoft recently held a Bing Search Summit in San Francisco to announce a slew of new feature roll-outs. From the sheer number of new features, it is clear that the Bing team isn’t taking a slow and steady approach in their competition with Google. At the event, Bing announced the immediate or soon-to-be implemented roll-out of no less than 32 new features in 8 different categories pertaining to their search offering and mobile device apps for iPhone and Android.

The goal of these improvements appears to be to tweak the details of the Bing search experience in order to help filter down the search experience for their users to the most frequently completed tasks they are conducting on Bing. For some insight, here is what Microsoft has to say about Bing queries, “…[the queries] fall under 155 query segments, which include things like Music (4.6% of searches), Consumer Electronics (1.6%), and Recipes (1.1%). Bing wants to take these segments and figure out which verbs they typically involve: music has ‘download songs’ and ‘read lyrics’, electronics has ‘read reviews’, and so on.”

Bing has come up with 400 “unique visual experiences” depending on the search query in a bid to differentiate information for users in a meaningful way. One of the things Bing is aiming to do is save its users a few seconds here and a few seconds there. Some examples are:

• When doing a travel query such as “flights from Philadelphia to Seattle in January”, the engine will provide a form with pre-populated fields that include those options.
• When doing a query about a specific movie, the movie appears first in the results with a grid of reviews.
• TV shows now have an overview page that allows for browsing of TV listings.
• Major cities have overview destination portals that display images, hotels, and other city-specific information.
• Product reviews are displayed inline with the search results listing for searches performed around products.



Bing is still pushing hard to win the war of relevance in users’ minds, and this latest release was aimed at giving the average user the “oh, that was great that they did that” feeling that is often missing from Google’s more straight-forward, scientific approach.

More information and a full list of new features can be found on the Bing Search Blog.



Everyone at Razorfish Search is getting ready for the search Alliance between Yahoo and Bing. Since the traffic distribution officially started moving over on October 11, the numbers have taken a swing into the right direction. If you have been reviewing your Bing traffic numbers, both impressions and clicks should now be higher in Bing while your Yahoo traffic slowly diminishes. On average, results show that impressions and clicks have increased on Bing by 35% – 50%. Bing impressions will continue to increase throughout the month, as Yahoo distribution will reach 100% by October 31. Everything so far is looking promising across the board.  The big question is: how will your CPC’s and performance be impacted when the Alliance is completed? Only time will tell…

Who are you and what have you done with my Google?

Does Google’s new homepage remind you of Bing?

We think so too. But Google offers an option to change your background. We ask: where’s the original background? At least Bing’s homepage is a surprise every day and you can learn a little something by hovering around the photo. Try again, Google.

Take our quick poll and tell us what you think: