Bing Adds Search to Microsoft Office

Users will soon be able to search with Bing without leaving Office Word Online, Bing announced earlier today in a blog post.

The new Insights from Office scans users' documents and makes educated guesses about the nature of the query, saving time and eliminating the potential of distractedly getting sucked into the vortex of search engines. The search results are then ranked in order of importance.

In the blog, Ryan Gavin, general manager of product management at Bing, used Abraham Lincoln as an example: If your child is writing about Lincoln, the software is sophisticated enough to know that it's a report on the 16th president, as opposed to the car company, the movie, or the capital of Nebraska.

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Welcome to the Age of Multiscreen Storytelling

Consumers in the near future will expect to get their advertising in story form across multiple screens. Here is a look at some brands that are already embracing this trend.

Storytelling as it relates to digital media is often associated with content marketing. Branded films, Web series, social video, native ads...all are ideal channels for dispatching stories that bring consumers closer to brands. Think about display ad campaigns, though, and you'll find storytelling is a theme here, too. And just try having a conversation about multiscreen advertising without bringing up the concept of brand story.

In fact, it looks increasingly like multiscreen advertising is where we'll be seeing brand stories unfold. We've entered the age of the multiscreen campaign, and there's no going back. In its global Cross-Screen Engagement study, Microsoft Advertising found that 68 percent of consumers engage in "content grazing" - multi-tasking using several devices at once. According to the report, "Marketers will only succeed in the multiscreen world if they create content that enables personal engagement across TVs, PCS, consoles, tablets, and mobile devices."

They're already on their way. A recent survey of leading ad agencies conducted by data-driven ad platform Jivox found that almost 75 percent of advertisers are running multiscreen ad campaigns, and two-thirds plan to do the same before the year is out. The data is consistent with a report from the Association of National Advertisers and Nielsen that revealed 48 percent of marketers consider multiscreen advertising "very important" to their marketing efforts. In that study, 72 percent of respondents said they expect to increase their integrated multiscreen campaign budgets between 26 and 100 percent by 2016.

"Multiscreen advertising and mobile spend is skyrocketing as brands realize they can't skip a screen like mobile if they want to reach today's always-connected consumer," says Diaz Nesamoney, founder and chief executive (CEO) of Jivox. "Unfortunately, many advertisers are still unintentionally running interactive ads that end up rendering as static fallbacks because the ads have not been optimized for mobile." Companies like Jivox - and multiscreen video platforms like Mixpo and YuMe - offer solutions designed to run multiscreen ad campaigns at scale hoping, Nesamoney says, that they'll "engage customers on every screen."

Media planners and buyers can engage consumers through multiscreen stories in numerous ways, but the main idea is to let the narrative unfold across multiple platforms while leveraging each medium's strengths. When consumers encounter an ad campaign bit by bit, in different places and at different points of the day, they get an experience akin to watching a movie or reading a novel. They're drawn in, their interest is piqued, and they're eager to see what happens next. Because of its ability to deliver a brand message in this fashion, multiscreen marketing is a perfect storytelling strategy.

At this year's Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Microsoft showcased several campaign case studies that told multiscreen brand stories through episodic programming across laptops, Xbox, and tablets. Among them was a campaign for Lexus that promoted its Web-based extreme sports series, "Ride With the Other Me."

Sometimes, a brand's story is more about what it has to offer customers in the context of their everyday lives. In a different Microsoft Advertising multiscreen campaign for Ford Europe, the viewer receives geo-targeted display banners that incorporate a real-time weather forecast on Bing News to promote Ford's heated windshield. An in-game mobile ad on the viewer's Windows Phone then highlights another Ford feature and taps into Microsoft's intelligent personal assistant Cortana to give the user the ability to schedule an appointment with a Ford dealer, while a third provides a portable Wi-Fi hotspot on Ford's behalf.

As brands continue to invest in multiscreen advertising, the way in which they shape their messaging will become a critically important part of their campaigns. It won't be long before this new breed of multi-tasking, cross-screen consumer fully expects to get his advertising in story form.

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Bing Adds New Twitter-Based Search Features

As part of Bing’s partnership with Twitter, it is adding some new search features in order to help searchers more easily find relevant information on the social media platform.

The search works like an algorithm, using a variety of signals including retweets, freshness, verified status, and tweet quality, in order to display relevant tweets in the search results. This is a lot more intuitive than Twitter’s own search, where everything is time-based, although there is the option to search for "top" or "all" tweets, as well as display the search results based on only those you follow and those near you.

In Bing, when you search for a hashtag, it will display relevant tweets right in the search results with a small Twitter icon next to them. The results will show the tweet, who tweeted it, and how long ago it was tweeted, along with any relevant media included in the tweet, such as a link to a video with a small accompanying image.

You can also now search for people via their Twitter handle - do a search for @name and it will bring up relevant Twitter accounts. It does appear that the Twitter accounts must be either verified or have a high number of followers in order to be displayed in the drop-down when the user is searching for a username with the @.

When searching for a handle, Bing will also display whether the user is verified or not, which can help those who are trying to find a well-known person’s Twitter account, especially for those that have multiple fan Twitter accounts or parody accounts.

Bing is also now including popular content tweeted about a particular person in its search results, showing the content that is most-shared under a "Tweeted About" section in the results.

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How the Internet of Things Will Affect Social Media

If you own a smartphone, then you’ve already bought into the concept of the Internet of Things. Think about it. the main purpose of a telephone is to facilitate verbal communication across distances. The mobile phone makes it possible to accomplish this objective without having to remain tethered to a specific location, but thanks to cell towers and telephone lines, this can all be done (and was done for more than a century) without the need of the internet. So, why is it that we’re all currently walking around with wirelessly-connected supercomputers and calling them “phones”? It’s because we realize that our lives are enhanced through constant connectivity. By networking a mobile phone to other computers and servers around the world, we gain access to information that we can use to increase our own productivity, knowledge, or enjoyment. So, the question is this: Why stop with the phone?

This is exactly what leaders in the tech industry have been asking each other for the past several years. After all, if a connected phone can make such an impact, why not a connected car? Or a connected refrigerator? Or a connected pair of socks? The Internet of Things is the natural result. It is predicted that the Internet of Things will encompass over 50 billion devices by the year 2020, and as more and more devices are made “smart,” we’re going to start seeing some fairly drastic changes in the way that our world works.

For example, let’s take a look at social media.

Social media is, in and of itself, a fairly new and influential innovation. In fact, some have called it the single most impactful development of the last decade. Today, 72% of the American adult population use social media sites, and it seems like it’s impossible to surf the web or even look through a magazine (if anyone even still does that) without being buried in a flood of “like” and “follow” invitations. As the internet of things gains strength in the years to come, it will find social media ready to take its hand. But will this new partnership benefit humanity, or hinder it? The quick answer is yes. Let us explain.

Yes, having our various appliances and devices able to connect directly to our social media sites will be a boon. Our personal preferences for products will be delivered to advertisers who will give us special offers and send sms messages tailored to our own tastes. We’ll be able to receive updates from home systems letting us know how things are going back at the house while we’re away. Friends and family will be able to check in on us and our activities without having call or text us directly. Your iWatch will check in for you via Facebook when you arrive at an event. Your oven will take a photo of the cake you just baked and post it directly to Instagram. Basically, any information that you might want posted to your page and available to your acquaintances or to marketers will automatically be handled by the devices themselves.

And yes, the information that you would rather not share might be just as available. The 2013 Snowden fiasco proved that the data that we choose to send and receive across networks isn’t nearly as secure as many had hoped. With revelations regarding NSA surveillance, and other scandals involving the less-than-legal gathering of consumer information by business marketers, it seems fairly clear that the Internet of Things could be just another nail in the coffin of individual privacy. Would you feel as though your sensitive information were safe if Google or Microsoft had an informant (or several) hidden in your home, watching your every move? Because once your devices are all internet-connected, there’s a good chance that you’ll have even less say in what information is passed along to businesses and governments than is currently the case with web browsers and online purchases. Give the Internet of Things access to your social media, and you can expect to soon be sharing your page with any number of unknown eavesdroppers.

Still, there’s no stopping progress, as they say. The Internet of Things is already here, and in the next five years, we can expect to see it expand to encompass almost every facet of our lives. Social media will be—and indeed, already is—the first and most prominent arena in which the Internet of Things will really make its presence known. With its coming, we’ll enjoy a new era of communication, ease of access, productivity, and entertainment. However, don’t forget that increased connectivity means increased supervision, and as we embrace the Internet of Things, you can be sure that Big Brother will be watching.

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Local Listing Management Priorities: How & Where to Syndicate Local Data

Multi-location businesses face unique challenges in the management, optimization, and distribution of local business listing information. Accuracy is critical for every business, but those with a number of locations must also master scale.

It's easy to get bogged down in spreadsheets and a hodgepodge of tools. After all, most marketers struggle to see the ROI from local campaigns, so it can be difficult to justify putting budget here to streamline your efforts. You might simply rely on Yext, or have an agency do the work for you.

My last column looked at on-page validation or SEO factors, local landing page user experience, and local listing management together as components of your blueprint for multi-location brand success. This post will dive deeper into local data syndication – where to focus your efforts, how to do it properly, and scaling your efforts for maximum ROI.

Acquisition of Nokia Phones Adds New Anti-Google Weapons to Microsoft Arms Race

Outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was quoted, “By the early part of this year it was clear to me that perhaps acquisition would be a way to accelerate.” He wasn’t specific as to what they were accelerating, but it seems reasonable to presume that this is an acceleration of growth and, thus, Microsoft’s marketing war with Google.

Here’s how things match up in the IT weapons race, including new “ordinance” Microsoft secures via the acquisition of the Nokia Devices and Services business and their related patents. You’ll all have your own opinions, of course, but take a look and see, which you think, will ultimately conquer the other – and in which sectors?

Microsoft                                 Google

Bing search                             Google search

SkyDrive                                 Google cloud storage

Internet Explorer                       Chrome

Azure                                      Google Cloud

Windows                                 Android

Microsoft Office                       Google Docs

Nokia Lumina phones              Motorola phones

Lumina-ARM tablets                Nexus tablets

Nokia Mapping                        Google Maps

It was Bertrand Russell who noted that “War does not determine who is right – only who is left.” And given that Microsoft’s strategy for combatting competitors has been most focused and effective against single competitors (including robust challengers like Netscape and Lotus), we’ll have to wait see how these battles play out in the near-term. 

And, ultimately, who is left.

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Google's Search Market Share Drops as Bing Passes 17%

Google's search market share dropped slightly once again, with Microsoft and Yahoo slightly edging up, according to comScore's April 2013 search engine rankings.

Google dropped 0.6 percent in April, dropping from March's 67.1 percent to 66.5 percent. However, this is exactly the same search percentage as in April 2012, so their overall search market share in the U.S. has remained stable.

Microsoft's Bing saw the biggest increase with a total search market share of 17.3 percent, making it a 0.4 percent increase in April 2013 over their search share in March 2013. By contrast, it is a very significant increase from April 2012, where Microsoft had only 15.4 percent share.

Yahoo has continued a downward slide, despite Marissa Mayer taking over as Yahoo’s CEO and wanting to get Yahoo back in the search game. In April 2012, Yahoo had a 13.5 percent share, but they have dropped by 1.5 percent in the last year, as they are now sitting at 12 percent for April 2013.

While Google is still the huge powerhouse when it comes to search market share in the US, Microsoft / Bing is definitely making its presence known with a nearly 2 percent increase from this time last year. However, when comparing year to year, Yahoo and Microsoft are merely swapping market share between themselves, rather than making a dent in Google’s dominance, something Mayer, sees as a major problem.

Meanwhile, Ask's April search market share remained unchanged from March at 2.7 percent, but AOL's dropped from 1.6 percent to 1.4 percent in April.

Of the 20 billion searches conducted in April, Google led with 13.3 billion, followed by Bing at 3.5 billion, Yahoo at 2.4 billion, Ask at 539 million, and AOL with 290 million.

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94 Percent Of Teachers Say Students Equate “Research” With Using Google

It’s almost unanimous: 94 percent of U.S. teachers say their students equate “research” with using Google or other search engines — more so than Wikipedia and other online encyclopedias.

But teachers are less sure that their students are effective searchers, and they’re more skeptical than most adults about the accuracy and trustworthiness of information that’s found via search engines.

The data comes from a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project in conjunction with the College Board and the National Writing Project. Nearly 2,500 middle and high school teachers — the majority of whom teach Advanced Placement courses — took the online survey this spring. As a group, the teachers say that online search is a mixed bag with both pros and cons for the classroom and their students.

Search In The Classroom

There’s no question that search is impacting the classroom. A whopping 94 percent of teachers say their students equate “research” with using Google and other search engines. That’s substantially more than the 75 percent that say their students are “very likely” to use Wikipedia and online encyclopedias. More traditional research sources, like textbooks and librarians, are way down the list.

Despite the prevalence of search engine use, teachers are concerned about their students’ ability to do research online. Sixty-two percent of teachers gave their students high grades when it comes to their ability to use effective search terms — the other 38 percent gave students a “fair” or “poor” grade for searching skills. 

Beyond that, only 52 percent of teachers say their students have a good understanding of how search results are generated.

Trust & Search Engine Results

Another concern is the accuracy and trustworthiness of content that ranks well in Google and other search engines. Only 40 percent of teachers say their students are good at assessing the quality and accuracy of information they find via online research.

And as for the teachers themselves, only five percent say “all/almost all” of the information they find via search engines is trustworthy — far less than the 28 percent of all adults who say the same.

With that in mind, the vast majority of teachers surveyed — 91 percent — say that a top priority in today’s schools should be teaching students how to judge the quality of information. Many teachers even said that they’ve been spending class time talking to students about how search engines work, how to grade the reliability of online information and how to improve search skills.

It’s a fascinating study overall, perhaps more so for any readers that — like me — work in the search industry and have school-aged children at home. 

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Bing vs. Google: A Search Engine Taste Test

Let's begin this article with my bias; I use Google but I genuinely appreciate Bing. When Bing first launched it was, in no uncertain terms, a pretty lackluster search engine when one compared it to the gorilla in the room.

But as our good friend Jeremiah Andrick (then a Program Manager on the Bing team) said at the time when asked why it was inferior after so long in development, “Do you know how hard it is to build a search engine? Give it some time.”

Flash forward a few years, give them some of that requested time to collect user data, grab some market share, and tweak their algorithms, and it turns out he was right.

As an SEO, I still use Google and can't see that changing anytime soon. After all, I've spent so much time on Google that I've figured out how to search it for complex information.

Honestly, clients and website owners are more concerned with how much traffic they're getting than how great an alternative search engine might be technologically. Heck, if we were more concerned about technology than results Ask would likely still be relevant.

A major advantage that Bing has over an engine like Ask however is that their market reach surpasses that of even Google. If we consider Microsoft's reach onto the desktop and through the Xbox console, they have access to a large percentage of searchers – they just haven't been able to win their hearts and minds … yet.

Which is exactly why they've launched the Bing In On challenge (a wise marketing move to be sure). In this challenge they display Google and Bing search results side-by-side with all the branding stripped out and allow users to vote for their preferred set of results based purely on merit.

As far as I'm concerned however, this challenge doesn't fully paint the picture of Bing's growing strengths in the search realm (and may not depending on your search preferences), so before we get into that I want to point out a couple of the major moves that Bing's making that may have passed unnoticed by many (for now) because it's … well … Bing.

Universal & Social Positioning Preferences

Regular readers of Search Engine Watch may recall Nathan Safran's article from last month titled, “Searchers Don't Want Social in the SERPs, Prefer Bing's layout to Google's”. This article discussed the difference in the current layout of a SERP page after stripping out the brand and with the universal and social results areas clearly indicated.

I highly recommend reading the article for the full picture, but the basic consensus was that 63 percent of those tested preferred Bing's layout related to social search (though not universal). Those stats broke down as:

• 36 percent strongly preferred Bing
• 27 percent somewhat preferred Bing
• 19 percent strongly preferred Google
• 18 percent somewhat preferred Google

The breakdown on universal search was a bit different, with Google taking 53 percent, Bing 31 percent, and 16 percent of those tested having no preference.

If we look at this data alone one can infer (or at least I did) that if a user has no opinion on a search engine going in, they are likely not to be heavily swayed by universal search presentation but may be swayed by social presentation due to the stronger preference recorded in the study. This all depends on how you're searching and why but overall – I'd chalk this down as win for Bing. If only they had the chance to get in front of users.

Further, if one believes as I do that users can be taught to appreciate having their social experience integrated into their search results (more on that later), then a case could be made for the fact that more than integrated images and products, users will gravitate to results that include information on what their friends think and like.

Facebook Integration

It's important again to point out my bias. When Bing started integrating Facebook data in their search results back in May I got excited (and after 12 years of doing this … that takes a lot). The reason I got excited by this move was that they were doing what Google couldn't and that's integrate a large-scale “Friends” association into the results users are getting in their search results.

We all know about Google+ and we have likely all noticed the +1 button and how it can influence the way Google displays sites with the “x people +1'd this” below the result. The problem is, the people whose opinions I trust the most over a wide array of topics don't spend a lot of time on Google+ or +1'ing things.

I live in Victoria, BC and when I enter “restaurants victoria bc” not one of the results has any type of indication as to whether people I know like any restaurants there. Perform the same search on Bing and because they use Facebook to pull such data, I get two listings with a little “Thumbs Up” to the left of the result which, if I hover over it, will show me which Facebook friends liked it.

I did the same for “las vegas hotels”. Google gave me zero personal recommendations, Bing again gave me two sites with recommendations from people I know.

This may seem simple, but it could well be one of the most powerful features of all the engines. Consider again my search for a hotel. I can go to Expedia or the such and get their reviews, I can also get the reviews of a bunch of people I don't know who may have different needs that I do … or I can go to Bing and see which hotels people like me prefer.

I trust my friend Jim Hedger because I know him and I also know that he likes to stay in nice hotels but is as budget conscious as I am. I know that if he likes a hotel, it's very likely to be close to something I would like at a price I'm willing to pay. At the very least I know it's worth clicking through to for more information.

Similarly, I know that my friend David Kong here in Victoria is health conscious but in what I'd deem to be a “normal” way. I know that when he gives a Like to a health site, I can trust his opinion and am likely to click through based on this recommendation.

Essentially, Bing has done what Google has (thus far) been unable to do: provide a social integration based on a large-scale network of interconnected people.

I know that this is a huge point in their favor and I expect to see more and more Facebook integration into Bing results. And until Google can convince my grandmother, my dad and the next door neighbor to get a Google+ profile and start +1ing things, Bing will have a large advantage on this playing field.

So, Bing It On!

But all of this is irrelevant if either of two conditions exist:

• Bing's search results are poor
• Bing can't pick up some additional market share

After all, what good are recommendations if I don't search on an engine or worse, if I do and get poor results and leave frustrated.

Enter Bing's Bing It On challenge. Bing has created a page that allows the user to search and then displays, side-by-side, the results from both Bing and Google with all the branding stripped out and asks you to vote as to which you prefer (or a Draw if you consider them equal). After five queries they show you the results.

I should note before you give it a try, the results don't include the above-mentioned social integrations, it's just a test of the pure results.

When I tested it personally I got the following results from a purposely varied query set:

• hotels las vegas (selected result based on the display of rating) – Bing
• digital projector (selected results based on quick jump to shopping and review sites near the top) – Bing
• buy organic coffee (selected result based on ease of accessing shopping on a buy phrase) – Bing
• define quizzical (selected result based on layout of definition) – Google
• leonardo da vinci (selected result based on image with the Wikipedia listing and layout of page) – Bing

This was the second time I'd done a search on the Bing It On system but I didn't record the “why” the first time. In the first test I ended up with 2 Bing, 2 draws and 1 Google. When I was recording my reasons the second time I made myself select a preference and thus there were no draws.

As someone who uses search engines all day I couldn't help but worry that I'd skewed the results by simply knowing the layouts. I tried not to but some things one can't help.

So for the purpose of this article I decided to grab my laptop and head outside into the real world and watched others search and asked why they made the selections they did. The sample set was admittedly small (seven people) but their experience seems to match Bing's claims.

Of the seven people I watched searching, five selected Bing as their search engine of preference based purely on the results. Not bad, Bing.

The most common reasons for the preference based on my asking during each query were:

• Not sure, just liked it.
• Preferred location of shopping results (on 1440 x 900 resolution)
• Better images
• Better results

After that the reasons were pretty scattered, including one person who preferred the inclusion of video when searching “porn” on Bing. Personally and as a parent I have a word of advice for Bing … it's easy enough to get access to the stuff – you might want to address that.

Bing: The Choice of a New (Search) Generation?

Bing has a huge problem. I've never heard anyone say they're going to “Bing something” when they need information. You get into an argument in a pub, you'll “Google it” to settle the debate.

While people may prefer Bing results in a blind test, will those five people who preferred Bing in my sample now head home and start using it? Probably not – old patterns are hard to break. Ask Google, they developed a great social network but people kept using Facebook because old habits die hard.

What this does mean, however, is that Google needs to tread very carefully. The biggest threat to Google right now is that if they come up with either a format people don't like or a results set that is completely unsatisfactory – even for a short while –users may jump to Bing as a backup. If they do, and Bing keeps up a results set people seem to prefer, Google could very well lose users.

In addition, the potential for further integration of Facebook data into Bing and additional integration of Bing results/advertising into Facebook (I have no reason to know this will happen but it wouldn't surprise me at all with some of the possible moves that could be made by Microsoft later this year) they could grab both market share and (more importantly) advertising revenue from Google.

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