16 May 2012 by ReviewPro in Best Practices
One year ago, the web was buzzing about Bing’s integration of Facebook data into their search results pages:
“Not only [will you] see the individual pages or stories your friends like, but the overall sites they like related to the topic you’re searching for.”
Earlier this year, search marketers shifted their attention to Google as it introduced “Search, Plus Your World.” However, the big issue with Google’s update was that it focused on social activity from Google Plus – to the exclusion of the world’s most popular social networks, Facebook and Twitter.
Microsoft has been quietly signing deals with Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to introduce an update to Bing – making it what many now see as a superior social search engine. The recent redesign includes a user’s connections and their activity on Facebook, Twitter and even Google plus. This summer, the search engine will include data from LinkedIn, Foursquare and Skype as well.
A sidebar in Bing search results pages separates social data from search results, and it also includes a real-time activity feed and the ability to suggest people in your social network who can provide answers to a particular search query.
“For instance, if you’re looking for information on traveling to China, they might direct you to Facebook photos from one of your friends who recently traveled there. It can also recommend experts on particular topics based on tweets, public Facebook posts or comments on other social networks like Quora,” said Matt Rosoff in a Business Insider article.
Bing executive Derrick Connell said the goal is to “surface people, not webpages.”
With Bing’s market share now at 30% (and growing), this only increases the importance of social media activity for building visibility with the people you are trying to reach. Not only does engaging in the social web matter for becoming more influential in those networks, but increasingly it will raise your hotels’ profile in search results. And since search engines are still the place many people go to begin their travel planning process, visibility and ranking very important for hotel marketers.
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