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The local search results work in similar vein to those of Google. A search for "Chinese restaurants in London" for example will return a map including relevant results along with their contact details.
In order to appear in these listings and customise your local pages, you should sign up at the Local Listing Center Rather like the normal web results, local results are ordered by relevancy according to Bing's algorithms.
Typical factors which will list you higher are the number of links pointing to your website and local listing, the amount of details you include in your listing (the more the better) and including important keywords within your business name e.g. 'Chinese restaurant'.
Bing has retained the standard contextual
advertising system we are used to in other search engines. Adverts relevant to the keywords a user searches on are displayed on the search results page. Each time a user clicks on one of these ads, it costs the advertiser a certain amount of money.
As with MSN and Live Search, Bing displays more adverts to a user on the page than Google. The positions include the top of the page, the right hand side and along the bottom of the results.
Cost Per Click (CPC) prices are typically cheaper than Google which means you will get more users to your site at a cheaper price. In addition, Microsoft's search platform has traditionally been the highest converting search engine for over two years converting twice as high as Google. As such, you can expect a higher return on investment than the other big players. Small business with small budgets will benefit from Bing's approach however
large companies will find the traffic volume is low. Those with larger budgets who want to buy high-volume traffic will be limited in scope and may find they are forced to spend their money on Google.
The management of paid search campaigns on Bing is still through Microsoft AdCenter which gives you control over targeting, bidding, ad distribution, and other elements of campaign management.
Whilst Google continues to dominate the search industry, Bing is a clear opportunity for savvy marketers looking to cast their net widely. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO has also explained to shareholders that he is prepared to spend up to 10% of the company's revenues on Bing. Should this be realised, we will see a gargantuan outlay of 11 billion USD over five years and so it makes sense to broaden your strategy to benefit from that investment.
