3 Reasons Why The New Bing / Facebook Integration Is A Game Changer
By Kurt Steinbrueck
May 20, 2011 
6 Comments
On Monday Bing announced several new features integrating Facebook into their search engine. This new integration of Facebook into Bing is a game changer. Social media has been influencing search for a while and there has been some integration of social signals before this (like Google’s Social Circles), but this Bing / Facebook integration goes beyond everything else. Here’s why this is such a game changer.
- You do not have to be logged into Bing. You only have to be logged into Facebook. This is big. Most people don’t log into search engines, but nearly everyone logs into Facebook and do not logout. This not only makes it very easy for users, but makes it so they don’t even have to think about it at all. Once they’ve connected their Facebook account, that’s it. Done.
- It provides for social interaction while searching. This isn’t just a little note that one of your friends liked a page. You can actually interact. For example, if you’re thinking of buying a new blender and you’re not sure which is the best blender to get, you can easily create a list of blenders you are considering and quickly post the list to Facebook asking your friends their opinions. If you search for a city or something in a city, Bing will show you FB friends in that area and link to their FB profile so you can easily contact them about things in that city. These new features promote social activity as a part of searching.
- The Universal “Like” Button. If you have the Bing toolbar, you can now like any page any time. The website doesn’t have to have a like button anymore. This is big both for users who like to…uh…like stuff and it’s big for website owners who either haven’t been as social as they probably should be or simply don’t want to put a “Like” button on every page of their site.
Do you think this shift in Bing is a game changer?
What other Facebook features that Bing has added do you think are game changers?
Hmmm… all (58) of the posts and pages of my new Christian site are listed in Google, which sends me 100's of visitors per month, but only 12 are listed in Bing. I guess that should mean something for me.
Even with a plug-in that is meant to automatically inform the search engines of my sitemap changes, I find that, unless I do other things manually with the search engine Google, I still don't get listed as quickly as I would like.
Do you know of any methods that work to ensure all your posts/pages are listed with Yahoo/Bing?
PS Search from Bing currently accounts for 1 of my visitors per month.
I also have 1 visitor from ASK and AOL per month too – not a lot, but these visitors spend more than 5 minutes reading the Christian book I am giving away for free and visit many pages, so I would like to increase visibility there – it seems they are more 'targeted'.
Thanks for any advice!
Neil,
I have found Bing/Yahoo to be much slower to index pages than Google. So, it's probably just a matter of time. Make sure the pages are linked to from pages on your site that are already indexed and try to get other sites to link to those pages. Also, with Bing's Facebook integration, it is helpful to get people to like and share the pages. Both Bing and Google don't pay much attention to sitemaps, but links and social signals are effective at getting pages indexed.
Hi Kurt,
Thanks for the advice! This week I have registered with the Bing Webmasters service. I was hoping I could manually re-upload a sitemap, but Bing seems to accept only manual uploading of URLS (one at a time, 10 per day, max 30 per month). After reaching my upload limit, I now have 19 pages indexed – yay! My site's not growing at a huge pace so I'll get there soon!
I'm glad you are getting your pages indexed. Unfortunately, SEO is often a slow process.
Facebook is the second largest website beside Google, and one of the most important factor to bring users to your site. You need Facebook and Facebook needs you.
Nice Article Thanks for sharing.