Digital Marketing

May 29, 2009

Bing Local Search

Microsoft Corp. designed Bing.com to help you overcome search overload and make faster, more informed decisions when searching online.

Research indicates that 62 percent of people use a search engine to find a local business or destination.* However, finding the best local information online can be challenging. Whether it is a review for the newest restaurant in town or the contact information for a local plumber, information on local services is often strewn across many different Web sites. However, today’s search engines don’t always help you make the most informed decisions about whether or not to patronize a local business.

Bing is different — it provides tools that make it easier and quicker to find relevant local content, such as user reviews aggregated from local content sites, hours of operation for local businesses, one-click directions, maps and traffic reports.

Local Search Features

·        Detailed business listings. Each local listing in Bing provides a snapshot of information to help you make decisions. For example, a restaurant listing includes the phone number, type of cuisine, location, hours of operation, price estimate and parking availability. Search results also may offer quick links to customer reviews, menus, one-click directions and a bird’s-eye view** of the location.

·        Scorecard. Bing includes a scorecard that consolidates online reviews of local businesses in an easy-to-read format. You can click on “Show Reviews” to read consumer feedback for specific criteria. For restaurants, the criteria might include food quality or service.

·        Search refinement. Bing lets you refine local search results based on a number of factors, including rating, distance, type of cuisine, price or atmosphere, so restaurants can be filtered by “Mediterranean” or “romantic,” for example, to find just the right place for dinner. Other local business results can be filtered by payment options or parking availability.

·        One-click directions. People often have a good understanding of how to navigate their neighborhood, so by default, Bing provides directions from the nearest freeway or main route to a final destination, which can save time by eliminating a multistep set of directions beginning from your home. When needed, door-to-door directions can be accessed by clicking on “A Specific Location” from the one-click directions page. You also can access a variety of other navigational tools such as current traffic with Bing Maps.

·        Bing Maps. Bing Maps lets you easily find, discover and share location information. You can get maps and directions and view high-resolution aerial or bird’s-eye imagery.** Now with the introduction of Microsoft Photosynth, you also can add or view synths of many locations or point of interest on Bing Maps.

Availability

Bing is available at http://www.bing.com.

Follow Bing on Twitter: http://twitter.com/bing.

Chat with the Bing team at http://www.bing.com/community.

* Ipsos 2009, commissioned by Microsoft. 1,156 participants

** Bird’s-eye view imagery is not available for all locations.

Microsoft New Search Engine: Bing

Microsoft Corp. designed Bing.com to help you overcome search overload and make faster, more informed decisions when searching online.

Research indicates that 66 percent of people are increasingly turning to search engines to assist in making decisions — above and beyond simple navigation or information retrieval, for which today’s search engines were originally built.1 No longer satisfied with the status quo of search, Microsoft designed Bing as a Decision Engine to provide you with intelligent search tools to help you simplify tasks and make more informed choices, from mapping out the fastest route to get home to researching a product purchase or planning a trip.

Bing provides great general search results, relevance, a big index and speed — all of the hallmarks of a good search engine. However, because sorting through search results can often be time consuming, Bing organizes popular results in a different way, designed to help you get the answers you’re looking for without having to guess the right way to phrase a search term.

 

Making Search Easier

Almost any search engine can provide basic results, but with Bing, we’ve improved many aspects of the search experience.

·        Home page. Because you may not always know about the range of content a search engine can find for you, the Bing home page includes a beautiful new image daily, information hotspots embedded in that image, and clear links for starting your searches for video, news, shopping, travel, images or maps.

·        Autosuggest. Bing examines what you are typing in the search box and will automatically suggest similar terms or common refinements related to the term you are typing. For example, when searching for “California,” you will see common related searches, including “California DMV,” “California lottery” and “California ski report.”

·        Best Match. The Bing Best Match feature is designed to make finding relevant information easier by cutting down the number of clicks and getting you to your final destination faster. Best Match results include customer service numbers for retail sites, the ability to track a package right from the search page, deep links to common pages within the site and much more.

·        Document Preview. Nearly one-quarter of searches result in rapid click back, when you realize that the search result was not what you were looking for.2 Document Preview lets you hover over a search result to see a preview of the site’s content, which helps you determine whether the site is likely to contain the information you’re looking for — before you click.

·        Instant Answers. Bing provides Instant Answers that immediately return highly relevant direct answers in response to a specific search. For example, entering a flight number will return the most recent flight information and display it prominently in the results, saving the hassle of going to a separate page. Other Instant Answers on Bing include stock prices, local weather, sports scores and more.

Making Search More Organized

Our research indicates that 72 percent of people surveyed said current search results are too disorganized.3 To provide order to the chaos of search, Bing analyzes search results for certain types of search terms and organizes them so they’re easy for you to navigate. These categories include travel, shopping, health, technology, autos, entertainment, sports, animals and more.

·        Explore Pane. Located on the left side of the screen, the Explore Pane lets you easily filter search results. Features in the Explore Pane include categorized search results called Quick Tabs, links to related searches and past searches in Session History. The Explore Pane also can be used in the local, travel and shopping experience for powerful refinement of your search results.

·        Quick Tabs. Half of all searches are eventually refined to find more specific results.4 Quick Tabs anticipate your intent when searching and offers easy access to some of the most common refinements for a given search. For example, when searching for a favorite musician, Quick Tabs let you filter results by albums, biography, videos and images. These tabs change dynamically based on the search term. Searches for a certain city name yield Quick Tabs for tours, travel and images; searches for a car model generate categories on reviews, accessories and videos.

·        Related Searches. When searching for a specific result, our research has shown that people also like to expand their search to explore related topics. After making an initial search, Related Searches provides a list of related search terms, helping you easily expand a search to find more great results.

·        Session History. Nearly half of all searches are a repeat of a previous search.5 Session History provides easy access to searches from your current search session so that you don’t need to initiate a new query to get back to an earlier result.

·        Video search. Bing video search helps make finding, previewing and watching videos easier. Bing indexes content from video sites across the Web and our own index of full-length television shows. It also includes filtering tools to narrow a search to make it easier for you to find the exact video you’re looking for.

·        Image search. Bing image search includes infinite scroll, which lets you easily browse image results without clicking to a new page. Bing also has powerful filtering tools for images to make it easier to find just the right image.

·        News search. Bing news search lets you search the latest news from across the Web and receive news alerts.

·        Bing Maps. Bing Maps lets you easily find, discover, plan and share location information, including maps and directions and engaging bird’s-eye,6 3-D and aerial imagery.


Providing Tools to Help You Complete Tasks

Bing was designed to help you make smarter, more informed decisions faster. Bing focuses on four main areas:

·        Shopping. Bing combines many of the shopping features available across the Web into one intuitive and easy-to-use experience. In addition to providing many product search refinement tools, Bing also scans the Web for user and expert reviews, organizes them by product attribute, and then ranks the sentiment in the reviews as either positive or negative. This enables you to filter quickly through lots of information to inform a purchase decision.

·        Travel. BingTravel analyzes billions of pieces of airfare and hotel data to offer you flight Price Predictors and hotel Rate Indicators. Based on science, not marketing, Bing Travel enables you to make smart, well-informed decisions when planning a trip, every time.

·        Local. Today’s search engines don’t always help people make informed decisions about the quality of a restaurant or the best way to contact a local mechanic. Bing presents relevant content including user reviews aggregated from local content sites, hours of operation for local businesses, one-click directions, maps and traffic reports.

·        Health. Bing helps people find health information online. While there is no substitute for the expertise of a trained physician, Bing provides you with easy access to medical information from nine trusted resources to help you make more informed decisions about personal care.

Availability

Bing is available worldwide. However, specific feature availability differs according to market.

Bing is available at http://www.bing.com.

Follow Bing on Twitter: http://twitter.com/bing.

Chat with the Bing team at http://www.bing.com/community.

1 Ipsos 2009, commissioned by Microsoft 1,156 participants.

2 Live Search logs analytics, February 2008. Approximately 1,000 queries analyzed.

3 2008 Ipsos Vantis Categorized Search Concept Value Study, commissioned by Microsoft. 1,000 participants.

4 Live Search logs analytics, March 2009. Approximately 1,000 queries analyzed.

5 Live Search logs analytics, February 2008. Approximately 1,000 queries analyzed.

6 Bird’s-eye view imagery is not available for all locations.

May 28, 2009

List Of Top Press Release Sites

http://www.theopenpress.com/

http://afly.com/

http://www.pressreleasepoint.com/

http://communitypress.cincinnati.com/

http://www.webnewswire.com/

http://www.freepressreleases.co.uk/

http://www.freepressrelease.com.au/

http://www.ukprwire.com/

http://www.myfreepr.com

http://prurgent.com/

http://www.pressrelease.com.np/

http://bizeurope.com/pressrelease.htm

http://www.newsblaster.com/

http://www.pressexposure.com/

http://www.pressreleasespider.com/

http://www.free-news-release.com/

http://freepressindex.com/

http://www.pagerelease.com/

http://news.eboomwebsolutions.com/

http://www.seenation.com/

http://www.prwindow.com/

http://www.1888pressrelease.com/

http://www.openpr.com

http://www.pressbox.co.uk/

http://www.free-press-release-center.info/

http://www.mediasyndicate.com

http://www.clickpress.com/

List Of Top News Portals

http://www.politico.com/

http://www.coloradoan.com/

http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/

http://www.app.com/

http://www.thetowntalk.com/

http://www.thenewsstar.com/

http://www.dailyworld.com/

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/

http://www.mycentraljersey.com/

http://www.hometownlife.com/

http://www.chron.com/

http://www.news10.net/

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/

http://www.postcrescent.com/

http://www.fdlreporter.com/

http://www.htrnews.com/

http://www.wisconsinrapidstribune.com/

http://www.news.cincinnati.com/

http://www.delawareonline.com

http://www.freep.com

http://www.sdbackyard.com/

http://www.stltoday.com

http://www.ballhype.com/

http://www.jsonline.com/news/30720924.html

http://www.jacksonville.com/

http://www.thepost.on.ca/

http://www.bleacherreport.com/

http://www.community.foxsports.com/blogs/

http://www.westchester.com/

http://www.sportsbubbler.com/

http://www.floridatoday.com/

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/home/

http://www.thewhig.com/

http://www.sportingo.com

http://www.salisburypost.com/

http://www.usatoday.com/

http://www.sports.espn.go.com/

http://www.topix.com

http://www.wkyc.com/

http://www.sfgate.com/

http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/

http://www.wbir.com/

http://www.mixx.com/

http://www.indystar.com/

http://www.delmarvanow.com/

http://www.blogstoday.co.uk/

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

http://www.courier-journal.com

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com

http://www.bizjournals.com/

http://www.blogs.courant.com/

http://www.miamiherald.com/

http://www.westlothiancourier.co.uk/

http://www.techdirt.com/submitstory.php

http://www.tgdaily.com/component/option,com_contact/task,view/contact_id,3/Itemid,79/

http://www.tipd.com/

http://www.merinews.com/

http://www.onesentence.org/submit/

http://www.everydayfiction.com/submit-story/

http://www.slashgear.com/send-news-tips/

http://www.mashable.com/submit/

http://www.www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/tips/index.html

http://www.dslreports.com/submitlocal1

http://www.thedailycougar.com/news/send-news

http://www.journalinquirer.com/forms/submit_news/

http://www.appfrica.net/blog/submit-news-2

http://www.albaspectrum.com/SubmitArticle/SubmitNews.aspx

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/corp/submitnews/submitnewsform.shtml

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/submit-a-post

http://www.daily-chronicle.com/forms/press_release/

http://www.currypilot.com/Submit-a-news-tip

http://www.hudsonhubtimes.com/news/citizen_form/3551

http://www.justicenewsflash.com/

http://www.thebaynet.com/news/index.cfm/fa/submitstory

http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/npnews.php

http://www.tcpalm.com/forms/newstips/

http://www.badidea.co.uk/show-and-tell-submit.php

http://www.timesdispatch.com/rtd/online/site_information/feedback/

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/index.html

http://www.wickedlocal.com/tauntongazette/submit-news

http://www.mirror.augusta.com/events/

http://www.newsdemocratleader.com/

http://www.post-journal.com/

http://www.birminghammail.net/news/send-a-story-video-picture/

http://www.chieftain.com/forms/letters/

http://www.coastlinepilot.com/townhall/submit/

http://www.courier-gazette.com/submissions/

http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/encryptmail.pl?ID=CFF0C5E4&url=/2009/0518/p08s04-cole.html

http://www.egcitizen.com/calendar/submit/

http://www.events-today.co.za/submit/index.php

http://www.gazette.com/

http://www.kingstonwhigstandard.com/

http://www.mauinews.com/

http://www.mnsun.com/calendar/submit/

http://www.mymcmurray.com

http://www.news-gazette.com/editorial/

http://www.newsobserver.com/

http://www.newson6.com/Global/category.asp?C=121090&nav=menu682_1_5

http://www.ohio.com

http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/

http://www.sapulpaheraldonline.com/forms/submit_news/

http://www.sportswave.ca

May 20, 2009

How To Optimize A Dynamic Website

Internet technologies and e-commerce are advanced now and still developing day by day. As a result people prefer to have a dynamic website for their businesses or their online presence. So for some webmasters or new search engine optimizers who have experience in doing SEO for a simple static websites becomes necessary to know also about how to optimize a Dynamic Website?

For successful search engine optimization (SEO) of a dynamic website it is require to have some complex search engine technology and methods that are substantially different and much more sophisticated than the SEO techniques used for ordinary, more conventional "static" web sites.

In this article you can find some useful and important tips for how to optimize a dynamic website but first I would like to describe about what are Dynamic Websites?

Introduction to Dynamic Websites:
Now days often business websites are dynamic means that the web pages are dynamically built pages that allow user interaction and online shopping cart is an example for that.

Dynamic websites are websites whose pages are generated on the fly and usually built with a programming language such as ASP, PHP or JAVA. Often Dynamic sites are database-driven means that the site content is stored in a database and the dynamic code "pulls" the content from a database.

Problems in indexing Dynamic URLs:

It is really difficult to get dynamic web sites properly indexed in the major search engines unless they are professionally optimized. Even most search engines claim that they now index the majority of dynamic web sites but still only in some cases and it is limited to a number of URLs.

One of the most important reason behind having problem with dynamic sites to get indexed by major search engines is that Search engines often consider a dynamic URL as a set of infinite number of links.

Now days often dynamic web pages are created "on the fly" with various technologies such as ASP (Active Server Pages), Cold Fusion technology, JSP (Java Server Pages) and so on. Now all these pages are user friendly and works very will for real users actually visiting the web site, but they usually create a mess with most search engine spiders.

The main reason behind it is because all dynamic pages do not even exist until a user actually goes through a query or variable that generates the pages. Often search engine spiders are not programmed to select or choose any of query or variables. In this way, those dynamic pages do not get generated and that is why do not get to be indexed.

One of the main difficulties with search engine spiders are that they cannot read and are not trained to understand any of the dynamic databases of URLs which either contain a query string delimited by a question mark or any other database characters (#&*!%) that refers to as "spider traps." Once a search engine spider falls into any of those traps, it usually spells bad news for that dynamic web site.

As a direct consequence that most search crawlers have significant problems "reading" any level into a typical dynamic database, most of these search engine spiders have been programmed to initially detect and then ignore most dynamic URLs.

How to optimize a dynamic website to get it indexed by major search engines:

1. Using URL Rewriting Tools or Softwares - There are some URL Rewriting Tools and software available on the web that converts a dynamic URL to Static URLs. So it is better to use these tools to convert a dynamic URL of your site to Static URL.

For an example- Exception Digital Enterprise Solutions offers software that helps to change the dynamic URLs to static ones.

In this way, changing a dynamic URL to static one helps it to get easily indexed by search engines.

2. Using CGI/Perl Scripts - Using CGI/Perl scripts is one of the easiest ways to get your dynamic sites indexed by search engines. Path_Info or Script_Name is a variable in a dynamic application that contains the complete URL address.

In order to correct this problem, it is needed to write a script that will pull all the information before the query string and set the rest of the information equal to a variable.

When you are using CGI/Perl scripts, the query part of the dynamic URL is assigned a variable. So, in the above example "?id=586" is assigned a variable, say "X".
The dynamic URL www.xyz.com/abcproduct.asp?id=586

will change to- www.xyz.com/productname/A

through CGI/Perl scripts that can be easily indexed by the search engines.

3. Managing Web Servers-

Apache Server - Apache has a rewrite module that enables you to turn URLs containing query strings into URLs that search engines can index. This module however, isn't installed with Apache software by default, so you need to check with your web hosting company for installation.

ColdFusion - It is needed to reconfigure ColdFusion on your server so that the "?" in a query string is replaced with a '/' and pass the value to the URL.

4. Static Page linked dynamic Pages - Creating a Static Page that linked to an array of dynamic Pages becomes very effective especially in case you are the owner of a small online store. Initially just create a static page linking to all your dynamic pages. And optimize this static page for search engine rankings.

Make sure to include a link title for all the product categories, place appropriate "alt" tag for the product images along with product description containing highly popular keywords relevant to your business. Submit this static page to various major search engines including all the dynamic pages as per the guidelines for search engine submission.

In this way if you are going to optimize a dynamic website then all above tips can help you to successfully optimize your dynamic website and your site will get indexed by major search engines without facing any problem and you have a great chance to take your site among top ranks on major search engines.


May 4, 2009

Why Is It Better to Optimize Your Search Engine Rankings as Opposed to Other Methods of Advertising Online?

Most websites have their main sources of traffic coming from search engines.  Search engines, the main ones being Google, Yahoo, and MSN, are at the center of online traffic.  Their role cannot be emphasized enough.  In light of the always increasing number of sites on the Web, people all over the world rely on search engines to direct them to the right source of information.

The reason why search engine optimization (SEO) is so popular amongst webmasters is that it is the best way to bring in traffic at low cost.  Not only do you bring in traffic, but you also build your site's goodwill.  That is a very important notion. 

SEO also brings in targeted traffic because webmasters assume that when visitors arrive through search engines, they must have previously entered a search query.  SEO brings in "normal" traffic but also "webmaster" traffic.  What do you think that webmasters do when they want to exchange links?  They search for similar sites.  Again.... using search engines.  Putting emphasis on good SEO allows you to attract targeted visitors, to increase your site's goodwill, and to build visibility with other webmasters as well.  It is almost a self-sustaining process.  If your site is well ranked in search engines, other webmasters will automatically approach you to suggest possible partnerships, which will reduce the amount spent doing "active" promotion.

That being said, it is always recommended that you diversify your online marketing strategy to include other means of attracting traffic, such as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, pay-per-impression advertising, or pay-per-action advertising.  In addition to entering into online marketing campaigns, you can also utilize traditional marketing campaigns in the "real" world.  Experiment and see what works best.

PR Update and SEO Updates

Search engines are changing their techniques day by day. So every coming day brings some SEO updates for webmasters. Search engine like Google use to change its algorithms after couple of weeks that’s why some time PR update brings some unexpected and shocking results.

As every body use to search the desired information through some search engine, most probably Google. Obviously, every one wants to touch relevant date instead of wandering around the different sites. Search engine help us by sorting out the sites in such a way that the most relevant site comes up in top results. So in order to bring their sites among the top results webmasters use different techniques and the process of bringing these sites at the top of the list by using SEO updates in legalized way is called white hat SEO.


Search engines use different algorithms in order to sort out the data in better and faster way. However, the most successful and popular of all algorithms was developed in Stanford University by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. This algorithm was named Page ranking.  The prototype of this algorithm was launched in the market in 1998 with the name of “Google”.


Page rank algorithm was based on votes. For example, a link from site X to site Y is counted as a vote from site X for site Y. The site which has the more votes means have more back links will be considered more important and will get a higher “page rank”. One interesting fact is that Google assess the importance of a site through the sites from where it is getting back links. No doubt every back link is considered as a vote but different votes have different values. That means if your site get a back link from a site which has a good page rank and healthy back links that will ultimately affect the ranking of your site in next PR update.


So we can say that more and more back links is not the only way of optimizing your site for high search engine ranking. Rather then that if you want to see your site with good page rank after next PR update then don’t go for back links only, instead of this try to go for quality back links. Rather then back links, search engine also consider many other factors while allocating page rank, so webmasters should keep an eye on SEO updates, in order to get the idea about the working of search engine algorithms. Some times sites having healthy back links fail to get good page rank during PR update rather then that Google penalizes those sites which use to get back link by using black hat techniques. While if you will upload sites of same nich on the same ip of the hosting it may effect the google page rank of your sites. For more cheap web hosting information you can compare different hosting companies .


In short we can say that search engines optimization is not a rocket science rather then it is the name of continuously changing field, in which you can get guidance through SEO updates or you can also try your ways by following search engine guidelines. It really needs some thing beyond expertise. People who are working in this widespread field of search engine optimization love to get useful SEO updates. 

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