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Bing has been particularly bad at handling duplicate content. Bing didn’t have the same parameter handling capabilities that you can find in Google Webmaster Tools, but that has improved quite recently. Released rather quietly by the Bing team, parameter handling is now available in their webmaster tools interface. The engine has yet to implement support for the rel=canonical tag or the cross-domain canonical, but word on the street indicates that canonical tags will be supported in Q1 or Q2 of 2011.

Right before Christmas, Bing released a new feature allowing you to see incoming links to your site. The one note: Bing is only including links from content it includes in its index, so while this information is not all encompassing it certainly provides a nice overview.

Another nice feature introduced is a re-crawl and submit feature. If you need a page to be re-crawled immediately, you can manually ask for it in Bing Webmaster Tools. There is also the ability to submit a new URL so that Bing discovers it more quickly, however this is limited to 50 URLs per month – no doubt to limit spam attempts.

These aren’t likely to be the only changes we’ll see. A post late last year on the Bing Webmaster Central blog indicates that the team is looking at several improvements to the tool, including developing support for a crawl delay feature. This is pretty interesting; while the engines can support crawl delays specified in the robots.txt and you can slow down your crawl rate in Google Webmaster Tools, Bing is looking into perhaps allowing you to turn off crawling at certain times of the day. Some webmasters have been requesting this tool for a while now, but it has never been implemented; it could help larger websites meet user and engine demand where site capacity is an issue.

While Bing Webmaster Tools is still in development and a bit behind Google in terms of functionality, it will be interesting to keep an eye on the tool this year to see how it develops.

About the author
Charlotte Bourne is a Search Marketing Strategist with Mediative. You can follow Charlotte on Twitter @everydaylife.

The keynote for the 2009 Bing Search Summit was Satya Nadella, SVP of Microsoft’s Online Services Division. At the time, Bing demonstrated its current state of search through the following graph, highlighting the problems people were having with Bing search (and even being apologetic for it):

This data comes from Bing search and toolbar logs. Search sessions can also be quite intensive, with 5% of search sessions lasting longer than 30 minutes. Knowing this information means Bing knows it needs to improve. In its role as a decision engine, Bing’s job is to make a variety of information available in as few clicks as possible. Current features on the search engine, such as related searches and authoritative answers, are all ways the engine is trying to surface a variety of information in order to broadly meet searcher intent. This, along with Bing’s stated focus on the verticals of product purchases, local, travel, and healthcare, form the basis for Bing’s focus on improvements.

Turn to 2010. Bing has kept its focus on its key verticals by introducing new features that assist with all except for healthcare. There are improvements to Bing Maps so that local landmarks and local transit information are improved, in addition to interface improvements. Functionality features for local tickets and from local restaurants helps to assist in purchasing those products. Bing has really improved the amount of information available around travel, providing flight details, airfares and destination pages for various cities within the SERPs, depending on your search query. There’s also been a strong focus on mobile; many of the new mobile features have specific local functionality, which makes sense as Microsoft has found that 53% of mobile searches have a local interest. And Bing has not just kept social in mind: new features allow for greater integration with Facebook, including seeing what search results your friends have liked on the Bing SERP. With the recent information that social can influence organic search results, expect to see more SEOs paying greater attention to the integration of search and social in the upcoming year. Plus, with such a strong focus on a few key verticals, it will make sense for businesses affected by those verticals to keep a close eye on Bing – it may not have the same market share as Google, but its functionality may help to draw in more customers in those particular areas.

Charlotte Bourne is a Search Marketing Strategist with Mediative.

We recently ran an analysis for one of our clients of the length of keyword query (whether it is one-word queries such as “dog” or two-word queries such as “dog catcher”, etc.) for the two weeks leading up to Google Instant compared to the two weeks prior. For this particular client, three-word search queries are the main driver of traffic to their site followed by two-word and four-word queries.

Here are the results:

We conducted a statistical analysis (thanks, Ian) to determine if the changes we saw pre and post Google Instant launch were actually statistically significant. Using a 95% confidence interval, only the change in one-word search queries could be considered statistically different (a decrease from before Google Instant to after). Interestingly, the vast majority of those one-word search queries were for branded terms. Given our knowledge of our client, we know that they released a new product in August which generated additional traffic to their site. The decrease in search volume could be attributed to falling off interest as people looking for their new product have already had the time to search it out and learn about it.

Our next areas for further analysis are:

- looking at clients of ours who are more dependent on one and two-word queries as a driver of traffic to their sites to see if people are increasing using Google auto-suggested search queries

- looking at the change in the number of impressions for client sites, which we’ll be doing for our clients once that data becomes available in Google Webmaster Tools.

First, Google must crawl your news articles. There are two ways Googlebot can find your article: either through a discovery crawl or by visiting your news sitemap. A news sitemap is recommended as it allows you to provide greater control about the meta data you provide to Google about a topic.  If you want any articles omitted from Google News, you can omit the article using your robots.txt file or through a noindex tag on your website. Google will also recrawl articles after 12 hours to check for updates to stories. Ideally, your articles will have unique URLs with at least three digits. If this isn’t possible, a news sitemap will tell Google what articles should be indexed.

Second, Google groups your article with others of related content. After articles have been discovered by Google, they are classified into topics (such as business, sports, or entertainment) and by region such as US, Canada, or Australia. Google is using words found within the text of your article to group your article. To help Google scan your article for content and understand what your article is about, don’t break up your article into different sections. Plant keywords in your title. Keep press releases and satire separate from your articles so the distinction between the two is clear – Google is not looking to rank press releases in Google News. And put dates between the title and body of the article so Google understands the date range.

Finally, Google ranks articles. PageRank is not as important a factor for Google as new articles will not have had time to develop incoming links. When ranking articles, Google News handles two different types of rankings.

One aspect of ranking is story ranking. When you visit Google news, you will see that all articles about one topic are grouped into a ‘cluster’ or topic. How highly a group of stories ranks is based on “aggregate editorial interest”, that is, the number of different publication issuing articles on a topic along with wire distribution, op/eds and follow up articles. Google is using the amount of material published on a topic to determine where the most public interest is.

Then there is article ranking – the ranking of each story within the story cluster. Many signals determine article ranking, but here are a few significant factors:

- Fresh and New: Recent and original content will rank higher within a story cluster than older stories will, so the public can find the most recent information on a topic easily.

- Duplication of Information: A story that has been cited by other publications is likely to rank higher.

- Personalization: Google will return customized results for users including more local sources and based on your previous content preferences.

- Trusted Sources: Google monitors click through rate to determine which sources are frequently clicked on and are therefore trusted by users. This is also dependent on geographical region and topic area.

If you are using images that you want to show up in Google News results, use a large, in-line .jpeg image with descriptive captions and text. Keep images near the title of an article to ensure it is associated with the article topic.

XML sitemaps are one way to assist Google in finding your content. For more information, see our related post on Google News Sitemaps.

The web crawler that fuels Bing’s search results will also be changing. As of October 1, MSNbot 2.0 will be replaced by “Bingbot”, which is currently being tested. For websites that have a crawl exclusion set up in their robots.txt file, Bing has said that the Bingbot will follow exclusions set up for the previous MSNbot – no change is required to the robots.txt file by webmasters though eventually you will want to have this updated. If you have directives in your robots.txt for both MSNbot and Bingbot, the new Bingbot will ignore directives for MSNbot and only follow directives for Bingbot, so make sure you don’t have conflicting information for the two different bots as different directives won’t both be followed.

The basics of SEO optimization are the same for Google and Bing: original content with targeted keywords, quality links, and well designed, cleanly coded sites. There are some differences in the Google and Bing user interfaces – Google’s blended results versus Bing’s related search results, quick tabs and categories – which means there are some different tactics for optimizing for some of the ‘finer details’ of SEO. If you don’t already have your website set up in Bing Webmaster Tools, you should make sure your site is set up and there are no crawl errors occurring that would prevent your site from being indexed or ranking well. I’ve noticed that Bing’s geotargeting can sometimes be off for foreign sites, so make sure Bing correctly recognizes the country and language your site is targeted to. If you are wondering how well you will do on the new Yahoo! search results page, check your current Bing rankings as these will be similar once the transition is complete.

There’s a number of different methods you can use when developing your social media strategy. One that we’re fond of at Enquiro is Forrester Research’s POST method. POST stands for People, Objectives, Strategy, and Technology. One of the benefits of this method is how it keeps the user, rather than the technology, at the centre of your strategy.

The first step in developing a social media strategy is to know who you need to reach – the People part of the POST method. And this is where Buyersphere insights, from Enquiro’s research on how business buys from business in the online marketplace, can be really useful. Remember that in B2B sales, you actually need to reach two very different types of people: people who use your products and services (the “doers”) and people who decide whether to purchase your products and services (the “buyers”). This can give you two different target audiences who you need to reach with your social media strategy. They can have differing demographics, visit different social networks, and have differing levels of participation online.

The doer will be interested in information on the latest news about your industry and best practices that they can use in their own work. If they aren’t using your product yet, they will be looking for more information about your services. If you are using social media as a customer support channel for past purchasers, it is the doer you are talking to.

The buyer is looking to ensure that you are a trustworthy vendor. They need to know that buying your product isn’t a financial risk to their organization. Reputation management will be important in successfully reaching this persona. This speaks to the need to listen to what people are saying about your brand online. And while you can’t control what people say about your business, you can demonstrate that you respond to your customers’ concerns. If you have a high risk product (very expensive or if you an unestablished brand in the marketplace), showcasing your company as a thought leader in the industry can be persuasive for the buyer.

Knowing that there are two different personas also means that you will develop different objectives and follow different strategies for each group. The reason why and how you engage a doer will be different than why and how you engage a buyer. A doer, for example, is more likely to become an evangelizer of your product than a buyer is. And only once you figure out who you are trying to reach and why you want to engage them can you then ask “Do I need to be on Facebook?”. If you know your target audience and your objectives, then you will be able to decide what technology and platforms will best help your social media strategy to succeed.

Twitterfeed – Twitterfeed integrates with your blog so that every time you publish a new blog post, your Twitter feed is updated automatically.

Tweetmeme – For finding new memes and top tweets on Twitter. Sort options include subject, media types (news, images or video), and period of time.

We Follow – A director of Twitter users if you are looking to find people to follow, sorted by topic of interest. Also a place to add yourself if you are hoping to gain users yourself.

Twellow – another director of Twitter users, plus Twellowhood, for finding people in a specific geographic location.

Bit.ly – A URL shortener with click-through information.

MyTweeple – Trying to decide whether to follow someone? Use this tool to check out a persons user stats, latest tweets, and to penalize spammers.

Hootsuite – A nice application for scheduling tweets for later dates. Also can track stats.

TweetDeck – A favorite of ours in the office. Everyone around me uses TweetDeck to display their tweets in customizable columns which can be sorted by groups and type of message (i.e. DMs, mentions). For desktop and iPhone.

Readtwit – Readtwit is a way to filter your Twitter feed so that redirects (such as URL shorteners) are resolved and you get an RSS feed of your content.

What the Trend – This site explains why certain topics are trending.

Do you have any other favorites?

-          Procrasdonate – Have you been wasting time surfing around the internet aimlessly? Need an incentive to be more productive online? Procrasdonate is an application that tracks when you are spending time online on time wasters rather than working – and if you spend too much time surfing or on Facebook, you have to make a donation. It gives you a reason to be more productive and if you are not, you are still supporting a worthy cause.

-          Nabuur – Nabuur is a site that allows for online volunteerism in your area of expertise. If you are an accountant, a lawyer, a marketer, or have some other specialized field of experience, Nabuur will match your talents with local communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

-          Blog Action Day – Blog Action Day is a day in October where bloggers around the world write about one specific topic. In 2009, over 13,000 bloggers participated by writing about climate change. It’s a great way to bring visibility to critical issues by harnessing the crowd.

-          No Impact Man – This site arose out of the No Impact Experiment, where a journalist and his family tried to live without making any impact on the environment (no trash, carbon emissions, etc.) – while living in New York City. He has since launched No Impact Man, which allows anyone to tell stories about how they try to impact environmental change – no matter how big or how small – to inspire others.

-          Relay for Life – one of my favourites. Relay for life is a virtual walk-a-thon for cancer research. It takes place in Second Life. People raise money and walk their avatars in an online environment in the same way that is normally done in an offline one.

-          Avaaz – Avaaz.org tackles a wide range of social issues. This community has a bottoms-up approach when it comes to deciding just what issues to focus on. Members of the site get to vote on what they believe are the most critical issues, which is how they decide what to take action on.

Social location sharing is not the only location-based tool gaining attention. MyTown and other location-based, augmented reality games based on location are taking off. MyTown has been particularly successful – particularly in terms of user engagement. The average MyTown user in the U.S. spends 60 minutes per day using the app.

If you are a business looking at ways to incorporate geosocial networking into your social media mix, here are a few things to consider:

-          Know which social location network is the most important for you to target given your geographical location. For example, in Vancouver, Foursquare is the most popular location-sharing application while Gowalla is king in Austin, where it was created.

-          Claim and / or tag your business on social location sharing sites. Once you have this in place you can reward repeat visitors with various promotions.

-          Offer coupons or discounts to visitors who check in to your location and Tweet / announce their presence publicly – this will help spread your brand name.