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Search engines and social networks: A match made in virtual heaven

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Bing-Facebook search results

Teresa Elliot discussed Bing’s integrating Facebook into your results when logged into Facebook.  This search-social integration allows you to use your friends’ recommendations to enhance your search results.

Bing’s union with Facebook allows you to personalize your search results according to your social network.  Twitter real-time results are also available in this application.

Social-search integration example

  1. You are craving a delicious steak in San Francisco.
  2. You go to Bing to search for steakhouses in the area.
  3. While doing so, you log on to your Facebook via Bing to see friends’ recommendations on steakhouses in San Francisco.
  4. Bing will then deliver results to you according to what your Facebook friends have liked in the San Francisco area.
  5. And voilà, a personalized search courtesy of Bing and your friends.

Who knows you better than your friends?  Take advantage of your social network to help you make the best decisions.

For further information on the Yahoo/Bing transition and more of Teresa Elliott’s insight on the topic, view Designated Editor’s post “Bing and Yahoo search integration complete: What’s the impact on paid search?”

Yahoo-Bing search transition: Mark James offers insights from the inside

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Paid search evolves as Yahoo and Bing join forces

Mark James spoke on the Yahoo/Bing search transition and on how to navigate your way through the changes at SEMPO Boston’s event on Nov. 18, 2010.

Yahoo and Bing (Microsoft search) search transition

  • 1 algorithm on 2 platforms
  • Accounts for 37.1% of searches

AdCenter attuned to landing page conversion

  • The algorithm is tuned to expected performance: Are searchers finding what they need?
  • Traffic may be dropping, but conversion rates are increasing

Yahoo-Bing integration’s impact on paid search

  • Real-time budgeting
    • Updates every 10-15 minutes
    • Can control overspending
    • Recommend setting budget caps to desired traffic
    • Last week: 97% of all campaigns remained within the budget cap
    • Can redistribute budget based on traffic fluctuations

Yahoo-Bing search tips to  increase your website visibility

  • Use query logs
  • Search query performance report
  • Expand from broad and phrase match

Microsoft Advertiser Intelligence

  • Negative terms can block exact match
  • Ex:  Want “mortgage calculator” and have blocked “calculator”, will block both
  • Ad Optimizer
  • Will determine highest converting ad & display 90% of the time
  • Landing page relevance weighed more heavily
  • Be sure ads and pages match

Sources such as, Microsoft Transition Center, will help to transition your business smoothly through these digital changes.

For further information on the Yahoo/Bing transition and Microsoft’s Teresa Elliott’s insight on the topic, view Designated Editor’s post Bing and Yahoo search integration complete: What’s the impact on paid search?

Bing and Yahoo search integration complete: What’s the impact on paid search?

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Bing-Yahoo search transition changes the paid search marketplace

Teresa Elliott, Search Evangelist at Microsoft, spoke about the recent changes at the SEMPO Boston event on Nov. 18, 2010. What does this alliance mean for paid search?  What does this mean for your business?

Enhance your PPC campaigns and business visibility to reach more customers

  • Microsoft is driving algorithm changes for Bing and Yahoo
  • 2 displays & 2 web properties
  • Algorithm search transition (completed 8/24) seeing 31.7% of searches across both platforms

Post Bing-Yahoo transition tips

Enables greater flexibility for search ad distribution controls, choose

  • entire network
  • or Yahoo & Bing
  • or partner sites only

Partner site domain blocking

  • Can exclude up to 500 domains
  • Available to PPC & organic

AdCenter offers

  • exact match,
  • broad match,
  • phrase match,
  • can bid on each individually

Keyword mapping

  • Normalization: need to bid on misspellings, plural
  • Expand keyword set

Budgeting

  • Can spread over month
  • Daily target (expect up to 20% over)
  • or spend until exceed

Resources like Microsoft Transition Center will help your transition.

Usability: Steve Krug’s testing tips you want to use

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“Usability is a measure of the quality of a person’s experience in interacting with content or services.”

All website designers aim for high-quality usability, but every site has issues says Steve Krug to an audience of 300+ at the November 17th Boston PHP Meetup in the Microsoft N.E.R.D center.

Follow along with footage of Krug’s presentation from the Meetup.

A website difficult to navigate loses an audience; greater usability equals greater success.

Fortunately, there are tests you can do to enhance the usability of your website.  Run these easy-to-do tests to increase your site’s usability.

Test usability

  • Have rounds of  3 people examine and critique your site
    • Make it a spectator sport
  • Use Krug’s usability test script
  • Get feedback on ideas in their rawest form (e.g. a napkin sketch)
  • “Recruit loosely, and grade on a curve”
    • When choosing users to test your site, use people with web browser experience
    • You do not have to pick the ideal user as a tester
  • Test your page monthly
    • Makes fixing site more manageable
  • Test your competitor’s sites
  • Start testing earlier than you think makes sense: the sooner, the better
  • Record your testing so you can look back on it

Enhance usability

  • Focus on the smallest number of most important problems
  • Focus on the issues users have the most trouble with
  • Work on the issues that you have the capability to handle and fix
  • It’s more likely there’s too much on your site getting in the way, than too little
    • Simplify your site
  • Don’t redesign, make corrections
    • “I’ve never seen a redesign that worked”- Krug
    • Focus on fixing observed problems

Usability testing is easy, cheap, and one of the best things you can do for your website.  Use Steve Krug’s wise words as you work on increasing the usability of your website.

For more information, Steve Krug’s webpage and books — Rocket Surgery Made Easy and Don’t Make Me Think — are a “common sense approach to website usability.”

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