Bing Launches New Maps with Apps

Microsoft has announced the launch of a new Bing Maps beta, which incorporates Streetside and Photosynth imagery.

"The new Bing Maps experience also features innovative new mapping applications such as Twitter Maps for real-time updates by area and Local Lens featuring hyperlocal, neighborhood content," a representative for Bing tells WebProNews. There are a number of interesting apps available, which is easily the most interesting part about Bing's new Maps experience:

It will be quite interesting to see what other kinds of apps become available. There is a lot of potential in that department. Watch this clip (Silverlight) about the new Bing Maps:

Maps aren't the only area where Bing is doing some new things. Other new features Bing features that will be rolling out over the next few days include:

- A new Bing Windows mobile application featuring improved auto-locate and voice search, available for download at http://www.discoverbing.com/mobile.

- The new Bing toolbar which flags online content and alerts you when you’re about to make a purchase that qualifies for Bing cashback savings, available for download at http://www.discoverbing.com/toolbar.

- A social network Visual Search experience -- by integrating Facebook and Twitter feeds, Bing Visual Search allows you to quickly find your status updates of your friends and followers, sort by upcoming birthdays and more. This is coming soon at http://www.bing.com/visualsearch.

The Behind Bing site that Microsoft recently introduced has additional information on Bing's new features. The site was set up to keep users informed about what Bing is up to.
 

Have You Read This?

> Bing Gets a Bunch of New Search Features

> Yahoo and Microsoft May Be Close to Signing

> Some Bing Users Seeing Latest Posts on Publisher Searches

Retailers Funneling More Money To Bing

Bing has managed to turn retailers' heads in a big way.  After looking at statistics from part of 2008, SearchIgnite reported that retailers spent almost 50 percent more with Microsoft's search engine this time around, which puts Google and Yahoo partly to shame.

Or, to be more precise, "Retailers have spent 47% more on search ads on Bing in Q4 this year than during this same time period in 2008," according to SearchIgnite.  "Compared with Google and Yahoo!, Bing also saw better YoY click volume growth."

Additionally, "[a]verage order values on Bing are 21% higher than across all engines, which could account for the spend growth."

Impressive, right?  It's only when you sort of step back for a moment that Bing's achievements look less stunning.  That's because, despite the progress Microsoft has made, exactly 75 percent of advertisers' dollars went to Google during the first part of this quarter, and 16 percent headed to Yahoo.  Bing grabbed just 8 percent.

Still, some headway is better than none, and retailers are demonstrating a lot of confidence in Bing by giving it a try during the all-important holiday season.

Have You Read This?

> Microsoft Takes Users Behind Bing

> Bing Gets A Bunch Of New Search Features

> Some Bing Users Seeing Latest Posts On Publisher Searches

Microsoft Takes Users Behind Bing

Microsoft has launched a new site for Bing, where users can go to find out the latest features that have been implemented into the search engine (excuse me, "decision engine"). The site's called Behind Bing.

"You can see each feature in action though a screencast, see me talk about why we did it the way we did (for those who like to geek out), and get some drill-down details," says Bing's Stefan Weitz. "For those of you pressed for time, check out 'Features for You' at the bottom of the site which highlights some features that I thought were especially cool depending on what and where you are."

Highlighted on the site currently are sections looking at:

- Real-time search
- Bing Local
- Weather/Event results
- Enhanced Results
- Enhanced hover
- Bing for mobile
- Videos
- Bing Travel
- Bing Health
- Visual Search
- Bing Shopping
- Wolfram Alpha
- Search Sharing
- Reference

There are videos and other sections for "explore," "overview," and "insight guide." If you don't regularly keep up with Bing's announcements or search news in general, this should serve as a good place to check out from time to time just to see what the search engine has been up to, and to stay informed about any functionalities that you may have otherwise missed. That will of course require that Microsoft keeps it updated. 

On a related note, all of the features that Bing announced last week are supposed to be "100%" live now for all users, but that doesn't seem to be accurate, as I am not able to access some of the new stuff yet.

Have You Read This?

> Bing Gets a Bunch of New Search Features

> Yahoo and Microsoft May Be Close to Signing

> Some Bing Users Seeing Latest Posts on Publisher Searches

Some Bing Users Seeing Latest Posts on Publisher Searches

Bing appears to be either testing or rolling out a new feature for news sites in its search results. The feature brings up a few of the most recent posts from a news source, when that source itself is the query.

I say this is either a test or a gradual roll out, because it is not happening in my own searches. TechCrunch has a piece about the feature (and a screenshot), which shows it, so evidently some people have it.

If you search for "TechCrunch," or the "New York Times," or presumably "WebProNews" or any other news source, you would get three listings (under the regular snippet/deep links) that display how old they are. The feature is much like Bing's current display for celebrity/a-list twitterer searches.

As TC's Erick Schonfeld notes, "It’s part of Bing’s obsession with providing realtime results." This obsession should be amplified soon (with Google also) as the results from the deals with Facebook and Twitter begin to surface.

The new news source feature is only a minor feature of Bing search because if it only displays for queries for that particular publication, chances are that users are just going to click through to the publication itself, where they will see the top headlines anyway. Judging from the similar feature Bing has in place for Tweets, they are often not the latest ones anyway (granted, Tweets can roll out a lot quicker than articles).

Still, the feature will give publications that much more real estate within search results, though the value of that real estate is debatable, considering the user is already searching for the publication.

Are you seeing this new Bing feature yet? Talk to ArisYulianta and Friends....


Have You Read This?

> Bing Gets a Bunch of New Search Features

> Microsoft Takes A Shot At Real-Time Search

> Microsoft and Google Score Deals with Twitter