While Bing has yet to make any major progress in terms of being a true competitor to Google, they have been working away at slowly increasing their overall marketing share (or at least not losing what they have gained). While Bing’s size is small compared to Google, marketers can’t ignore them completely. With millions of dedicated users (many of whom are in very desirable demographics) it is important to get your ads or sites on this search engine as well.
In a new effort to attract new users, Bing has recently updated their Bing mobile app and mobile SEO algorithms. This, they hope, will give users an improved experience so that more and more people will begin using their search engine. Whether this plays out in any significant way or not, it is important for marketers to be aware of the change and how it can affect them.
First, the new Bing will focus more on visuals, which are very popular with mobile search. Searches related to movies, celebrities, sports and more will produce results that are far more attractive and allow the users to get to what they are looking for more quickly. Along with the pictures, of course, will be text that is going to answer the questions most people have.
Putting more images into content, for example, will help your sites to rank better (it can be assumed) on Bing’s new search results. Adding images or video to your pages will certainly give your users a better overall experience, and is now also likely to bring in new users.
While this may not be a revolutionary change for Bing, it is just one more example of their ongoing efforts to compete with Google. It isn’t going to give them a big edge, it is a good reminder for marketers that they should be thinking about Bing in all their efforts. If you don’t, you’ll be missing out on some significant opportunities.
