As the U.S. draws close to a heated political season, Bing launched on Tuesday a new election experience at bing.com/elections. Bing Elections focuses on people who want a full view into Election 2012. It includes the latest news from all – Obama, Romney, neutral – perspectives, updated national, state and local polls, analysis of conversations across social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, a tracker to find polling sites closest to the voters, and real-time Election Day results.

According to a recent Bing survey, almost 75 percent of people consider themselves as active observers or participants in online political discussions.

Bing Elections reduces clutter from the sheer volume of information, news sources and sites that overwhelm people. It easily follows the pulse of the election, across both comprehensive news sources and social networks.

Bing.com/elections runs on Microsoft’s Bing search engine and mixes with editorial excellence from MSN and political partnerships with Politico, Real Clear Politics, The Cook Political Report, Huffington Post and The Associated Press. It gives people interested in politics a new site to keep updated with Election 2012.

Bing Elections constantly updates on the coverage, polls and predictions of every race and candidate down to the state and congressional level, as well an exclusive analysis each day from Politico and its candidate tracker.

“We launched the Bing Election hub to address an unmet customer need — providing a single, comprehensive place to go for elections news, results, and highlights and analysis of what’s happening across Facebook and Twitter,” said Mike Nichols, corporate vice president, Bing.

“Whether you’re doing research to inform your vote, want to stay in the know on the latest news and social media developments, or are looking for a great Web experience to complement your TV viewing, bing.com/elections is the place to go.”

Bing teamed up with Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks for visitors to not only follow trending topics but also see social sentiment scores and conversations this election season.

Bing Elections allow voters who are unsure of their polling sites to find where to go and vote, as well as watch exclusive videos from Chelsea Clinton and Mary Ann Huntsman both urging people to stop being couch potatoes and vote in this critical Election 2012.

Bing Elections will be featured as part of a new ad on network and cable TV starting tomorrow, November 4, and running until after the elections. The new spot is found on the Bing blog, with the Bing team taking it to the streets to bewilder political junkies and share how Bing Elections can help.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x5v7JsQAy0

Bing Elections Website Offers Aggregate News For U.S. Election 2012 Social Barrel - The Latest on Social Media

Google Sites have garnered the top spots to lead in comScore’s monthly analysis of the U.S. search marketplace for the month of March at 66.4 percent of search queries conducted.

The qSearch analysis of the U.S. explicit core search market in March released three days ago by the leading source of digital business analytics comScore, accounted Google Sites to be on the lead with 66.4 percent market share, followed by Microsoft Sites with 15.3 percent while Yahoo! Sites settled for 13.7 percent. Ask Network came out at 3.0 percent, succeeded by AOL, Inc. with 1.6 percent of explicit core searches.

Not much has changed when compared to the results for February 2012. Google Sites, Microsoft Sites and Ask Network maintained point percentages, while Yahoo! Sites decreased by 0.1 point and AOL, Inc. increased by 0.1 point, setting the ranking to be the same.

In March, 18.4 billion explicit core search queries conducted by comScore saw Google Sites rank first with 12.2 billion, Microsoft Sites came second with 2.8 billion searches, Yahoo! Sites followed with 2.5 billion, Ask Network had 555 million, and AOL, Inc. experienced 285 million.

Compared to the report for the previous month, the total explicit core searches have increased by up to 4 percent. Explicit core search queries have increased by 4 percent for Google Sites, Yahoo! Sites, and Ask Network, whereas Microsoft Sites and AOL, Inc had 5 and 7 percent gains, respectively.

68.6 percent of searches held organic results from Google, 25.9 percent of which carried by Bing.

(Image: comScore, Inc.)

Source: comScore

Google Tops March 2012 U.S. Search Engine Ranking Social Barrel - The Latest on Social Media

The interest of U.S. regulators has been piqued by the search deal the companies Apple and Google have agreed on, a new report says.

As a result, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has issued a subpoena to Apple in connection to the ongoing antitrust investigation on Google.

The information comes from Bloomberg which cites two unnamed people who have knowledge on the subpoena as the sources for their report.

The point being questioned by the FTC is in connection to Google being the default search engine of Apple devices like the iPad and iPhone.

Because of this, the U.S. government arm is requesting documents that include the agreements between Google and Apple which resulted in Google as the default search engines of Apple gadgets.

Nonetheless, Bloomberg says that the FTC has also “sent subpoenas to other handset makers and wireless carriers,” one of their sources has said.

The FTC is trying to find out if Google is abusing its dominance in the search market to influence companies like Apple and gain an unfair advantage to rivals such as Microsoft’s Bing.

The U.S. FTC has sent a subpoena to Apple for documents about the agreement which made Google the default search engine for Apple’s iPhones and iPads. Image: MATEUS_27:24&25 / Flickr (CC)

Source: Bloomberg

Regulators Put Heat On Apple And Google Due To Search Deal Social Barrel - The Latest on Social Media

Microsoft, which was an early investor in Facebook and sold banner ads  on the site between 2007 and 2010, became the first company to put its own ad on Facebook’s logout page, with a large Bing page appearing when some users logout.

The new advertisement is much larger than any Facebook previously offered, covering one half or more of the logout page, and it also includes search capabilities on Bing.  Users who wish to carry out a search on Bing can type terms directly into the Bing search box on the Facebook logout page.  Facebook just announced this past Wednesday the new logout ad page unit. Microsoft has had a long partnership with Facebook and its search engine Bing powers Facebook’s internal search, map and translation features, so it is appropriate that Microsoft is the first advertizer to buy the new ad offering.  Microsoft in turn uses Facebook data for its Bing decision engine and for Outlook and other email and chat programs.  Only premium advertisers that work directly with Facebook can buy the logout page ad, which is sized perfectly for promoting videos.

Microsoft puts Bing ad on Facebook logout page

The Facebook logout ad, while several times larger than expected and offering search functionality for Bing, and perhaps other features for other companies in the future, is quite unobtrusive overall since the user only sees the ad on logout and it only appears for a few seconds.  Further, the most active Facebook members rarely logout but once a day or after very long stretches so there is very little impact on the user experience.

Micosoft First to Put Ad on Facebook Logout Page Social Barrel - The Latest on Social Media

Microsoft Adds New Feature For Bing – Linked Pages

The search engine Bing, the Microsoft-powered alternative for Google, continues the series of improvements by launching a new feature: Linked Pages, a feature that filters results with personal relevance to users.

The Linked Pages application for Bing gathers pages that have relevant content to the Facebook account of the user and then presents them priority when other people search for their names with Bing, according to Engadget.

Microsoft has however implemented this new option in the U.S. only for now. Users can “link” pages to their own name, but also to those of friends, in order to make sure that when a friend or relative search for results they will find the really relevant ones.

Bing also offers the option to eliminate the results from Linked Pages and users may opt out links they proposed, but also to those proposed by friends. The application can be disabled at any time from the Facebook profile.

Microsoft Adds New Feature For Bing – Linked Pages Social Barrel - The Latest on Social Media

Microsoft is rolling out a much anticipated and major interface update to the Xbox 360 today, and its search engine Bing is playing a central role in order to provide better navigation.

Users may use voice commands to execute a Bing search with the Xbox 360 interface update.

Bing has traditionally played second fiddle to search engine star Google but with the Xbox 360 it plays a primary role.  Users can use verbal commands like “Xbox, Bing, [search term] to execute a Bing search, not on the internet through a web interface, but on local content in the Xbox. This makes it easier for users to find and enjoy their media and, some will observe, is similar to the way in which Google TV helps people find content.  Users who say “Xbox, Bing, movies”, for example, will be greeted with a display of the movie section, and from their if they choose, may enjoy executing their search further by using Microsoft’s gesture based peripheral Kinect, similar to that used in the movie Minority Report. If users do not wish to use voice commands, they may select the Bing tab to search for content.

The Xbox 360 updated interface, with its Bing integration, voice activation, gesture control, and dynamic splash page, offers some hints about what feartures later Windows operating systems will include.

All 57 million users of the Xbox in 35 countries around the globe will enjoy the new Xbox 360 when it is officially launched today.

Bing Central to Xbox Update Social Barrel - The Latest on Social Media

Bing search engine, which was launched by Microsoft in mid 2009 and promotes itself as a “Decision Engine”, is set to announce new features it has developed in an effort to differentiate itself, and take market share from Google.  Bing will also launch a marketing campaign next year to promote the new features.

Bing to announce new features, launch marketing campaign.

Bing announced this week it has completed its beta testing and soon will fully incorporate the things that worked best in its US service, such as using real time data from social media searches.  Bing’s Stefan Weitz said: “People are going to see really great results from the things they expect and they’re going to see some surprises with things they didn’t expect.”

Weitz, who is senior director of Bing Search Engine USA, said in the future, the company will focus its efforts on getting things done, not just providing them with a list of links to research. Weitz said for example, if one were planning a holiday, Bing will tap into all of the Web’s resources to help create that experience.

Bing’s service now is “focusing a lot on how we can build search-and-find into search-and-do. There’ll be some pretty clear differences with Google.”

Bing to Reveal New Features Social Barrel - The Latest on Social Media

Microsoft search engine Bing has launched a daily deals website called Bing Deals that aggregates daily deals from Groupon, Target, Nordstrom, Living Social, and other daily deal websites, providing shoppers with more than 200,000 deals to search through based on location, category, retailer, or keyword.

Bing introduces daily deals website.

Bing, in its blog post announcing the new service yesterday, acknowledged that there has been much discussion in the media recently about the “death of daily deal sites” but said that this is due to information overload for the consumer because there are so many websites, more than 300, which means it is very difficult for them to find the deals that are interesting and relevant to them.

Bing cited a comScore survey last year on daily deal websites which found that the daily deals audience increased 24 percent in the last year, and a Bing/Impulse survey that showed over the last six months 61 percent of respondents increased their use of daily deals. Bing said that 81 percent of people when asked said “they would increase their use of daily deals if they could find only the deals that interest them all in one place.”  Bing aims to provide this service with the launch of Bing Deals.

Bing has close integration with Facebook and is using this to make it possible for users to link their Facebook profiles with its new daily deals service.

Bing launches Bing Deals Social Barrel - The Latest on Social Media

Yahoo! And Bing have higher search success rates than their market share-dominant rival Google, a new report from Experian Hitwise reveals.

Bing and Yahoo! have higher search success rates than Google according to July analytics from Experian Hitwise. Image: Danard Vincente / Flickr (CC)

The metric measures the percentage of people searching on these search engines and clicking on one of the displayed links in the search result.

According to Experian Hitwise, Yahoo! had a search success rate of 81.36 percent for the month of July compared to 81.63 percent for the month of June while Bing had a search success rate of 80.04 percent for July against an 80.60 percent rate in the preceding month.

This is compared to Google’s 67.56 percent search success rate for July and 66.63 percent rate for June.

The metric can be interpreted as search engines showing more relevant and therefore better search results if they have a higher search success rate, observers note. It’s also important to note that Bing powers Yahoo!’s search engine for a number of countries.

Google, on the other hand, continues to dominate search market share with 66.05 percent maket share in July and 67.12 percent market share in June. Bing-powered searcher accounted for 28.05 percent market share in July and 27.68 percent in June, Bing.com searches accounted for 12.98 percent market share in July and 12.19 percent share in June, while Yahoo!’s search share was 15.07 percent in July and 14.49 percent in June.

Yahoo!, Bing Have Higher Search Success Rates Than Google – Analytics Social Barrel - The Latest on Social Media

ComScore, the “global leader in measuring the digital world”, released its latest data on the U.S. search market this week and it showed that in July, Bing maintained its 14.4 percent share, Yahoo’s increased somewhat by .2 percent to 16.1 percent, and Google fell .4 percent to 65.1 percent.

 

Bing's search share remains at 14.4 percent

Google clocked a total of 11.2 billion searches in July, 2 percent higher than June, Yahoo took 2.8 billion, 4 percent higher, and total searches on Bing were 3 percent higher at 17.1 billion.

 

Total internet searches in July were 3 percent higher at 17.1 billion.  ComScore’s results are based on searches entered by people on a web page (explicit core searches).  Bing’s numbers are better if “powered by” search results are considered because it powers Yahoo web pages, bringing its total searches powered by Bing to 26.8 percent of the total in July.

 

Google’s powered by share, which includes searches at Ask.com and Aol.com, fell slightly from 67.6 percent in June to 67.2 percent in July.

 

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Bing’s search share stays steady: ComScore Social Barrel - The Latest on Social Media