Category: Bing

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Microsoft Updates Name to Bing

This was announced recently: “…Our small and medium business brand is changing from “Microsoft Advertising” to “Bing.”” Although it appears that the advertising product will still be called adCenter, it appears that Microsoft is working to brand itself more consistently with the Bing brand. There may be additional strategies at play such as differentiating Microsoft’s online presence from its software presence. As to that, only time will tell.

In the meantime understand that Bing is much more than advertising on the Bing.com search engine. Bing results and Bing advertising is shown on the Yahoo, Bing, and even the Facebook platform. Of additional importance just this past week was Bing’s announcement that throughout the summer they will be rolling out a very tight search integration with Facebook.

From the images released, it appears that when you will search on Bing in the future, Facebook friends faces and comments about a product or place will appear on the left sidebar of your Bing search results page.

All in all, both statements are big news and let us know that in the bigger schemes of search there is some serious consolidation happening behind the scenes between the key social players like Facebook and Microsoft now known as Bing.

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Why Is My New Website Not Appearing on Google?

You’ve launched your new website and are waiting for the phone to ring with new customers wanting to place orders for your products and services, but nothing is happening. Then you go and do a number of searches on Google to see where your website is placed and your site simply does not appear, not even for searches on your own business name or for you domain name! What’s going on! How can you sell if no one can find you!

For newly launched websites, this is a huge issue; you are in essence invisible on the web until someone else links to your website. In fact, you may not even appear in Google’s search index until you have a few other websites linking to you.

Here’s what a newly launched website should do to counteract these problems:

  1. Although an XML site map is not crucial for your inclusion in Google’s search index, it certainly does not hurt to register one on new launch with Google and Bing. Just to make sure they know you are new and what your page URLs are.
  2. Make sure your web designer has linked to your website both in their blog and on their website to aid in getting search engines to know your new website exists. Spiders will follow links from your designer’s website to discover yours.
  3. Consider creating a Blogspot.com blog with a few blog posts talking about your new website and pointing to the home page as well as several inside pages. You don’t need to keep this off site blog updated, but are using it initially to just make sure you have some links from outside sources pointing to your new website.
  4. Make sure to set up accounts at Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Make sure to list your new website URL. Again you don’t have to keep these sites updated for more than several weeks if you don’t have the time, money, or desire, but they will be very important initially to search engine discovery right after you launch your website.
  5. Do a press release and send it out using PRWeb.com. I feel that this is one of the most important steps, although I have listed it last. By doing a press release to announce the launch of your new website, not only are you telling the world, but you are creating hundreds of links that all point to your brand new website.

Want to know more about how to promote your new website to get web visibility fast? Visit us at www.mccordweb.com to find out how we can help you.

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Does an XML Site Map Help or Hurt Organic Placement

If you can’t include an XML site map on your website for some reason will this hurt you with search engines? My unequivocal answer is NO.

Although we do recommend the creation and registering of an XML  site map with both Google and Bing (by using their Webmaster Control Panels), to not add one is not a serious blow to your potential organic placement on search engines.

Search engine spiders do not need your created XML site map to spider your website. They will by their very nature spider your home page and then follow the text links in your home page to auto discover the other pages in your website. If your website navigation is not text based or is encapsulated in images or Flash then text links to your key inside sections as well as your own website HTML based site map should be provided on your home page. These links will typically appear in the footer. Doing so insures that you feed search engine spiders a way to travel and discover the pages in your website.

So if you can’t create an XML site map for some reason for your website all is not lost. Just make sure that you have created text links in your home page content that point deep inside your website.

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Bing Announces Adaptive Search – Getting to Know You!

Bing announced this past week that they are implementing a new search results formula called adaptive search. In layman’s terms this means personalized search results. We’ve been seeing these type of results on Google.com for a while, but now Bing has publicly announced that it is going via the way of personalized results as well.

This is great news for searchers as it means that Bing watches what you search for over time and works to provide the most relevant results when you use Bing.com.

“The more you search, the more Bing can learn,” said the Bing team in a blog. “And (Bing can) use that information to adapt the experience so you can spend less time searching and accomplish what you set out to do.”

For website owners this means more difficulty in placing organically and pushes more businesses into paid search advertising for placement on Bing.com. With Bing.com results now being delivered with a tight integration with Facebook, it is important to keep an eye on what Bing.com is doing.

You may want to consider paid search advertising on Bing at this point or at a point in the future as it becomes more difficult for searchers to find you or to get top placement. As a Microsoft adCenter Accredited Professional, we can help you get started on Bing when you are ready.