2012: The trends every marketer should be aware of
As the countdown to 2012 speeds up, it's time for some predictions.
Here are five things brands will be devoting their time and budget to next year, including driving cross channel sales, multichannel attribution, and mobile marketing.
Bing drops CyberMonday.com, others over "thin" content
For companies hit by Google's Panda updates, the search giant's approach to cleaning up its index may seem quite unfair.
But if Google has been aggressive with Panda, its efforts appear to be no match when compared to Microsoft's efforts to increase index quality on Bing. Need proof? Just ask CyberMonday.com, which is run by the National Retail Federation's Shop.org.
Will Microsoft end up buying Yahoo?
In early 2008, Microsoft was willing to spend close to $45bn to buoy its search position. We know what happened next: Yahoo rebuffed, Microsoft walked away and Yahoo has floundered ever since.
It turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Microsoft. The economy, along with the stock market, tanked later in the year, saving Microsoft from what could have gone down as one of the worst timed deals in M&A history.
And despite the stock market's rebound over the past several years, Yahoo is still valued at well under half of what Microsoft was willing to pay in 2008.
Bing makes search more personal with Adaptive Search
For Microsoft, Google's overwhelming dominance of search has not deterred the Redmond software giant from trying to compete in the market.
In fact, if anything, it's only given Microsoft a greater incentive to try to recapture a market it probably believes it should have owned.
After years of failure, it's hard to argue that Microsoft has finally made some headway in the search wars with Bing. At the same time, of course, this doesn't mean that Bing will ever compete toe-to-toe with Google, or that Bing will ever become a profitable investment.
Five ways in which Bing is closing the gap on Google
In terms of hard numbers Google is still the leader in the search engine market, certainly in the US, UK and many parts of Western Europe, but that doesn’t stop Microsoft’s Bing from pulling out all the stops to gain some ground.
Here are five important ways in which Bing might just be starting to get an edge on Google.
Schema.org: good for Google, Bing and Yahoo, bad for everyone else?
Google, Bing and Yahoo may not be the best of friends, but every once in a while they do get together in a high-profile way.
That was the case yesterday, when the search trio announced the launch of Schema.org, which seeks to add more structure to content on the web.
Bing adds more Facebook integration
Despite the potential for search engines to leverage data culled from popular social networking hubs like Facebook and Twitter, it's still unclear what social's long-term role in search will be.
When it comes to Bing, however, one thing is clear: Microsoft 'likes' Facebook.
When is a deal no longer a deal?
According to a report by BIA/Kelsey, in just a few short years, consumer spending on 'daily deals' like those offered by Groupon and LivingSocial could reach $6bn.
So it's no surprise that the concept has been commoditized and everyone is jumping on the daily deal bandwagon. Take for, instance, major publishers like the New York Times which is launching its own daily deal service called TimesLimited.
Bing copies Google, again!
You'd think that after being caught red handed copying Google (or not), the engineers at Bing would come up with something original. But copying Google is just far too easy.
Sarcasm aside, Bing announced yesterday that it has added new personalization and localization features closely resembling similar features Google has had in place for some time.
Google and Matt Cutts are talking rubbish about Bing stealing their results
The internet has been awash this week with claims that Bing has been stealing Google's results. This claim is complete rubbish, despite the various statements by Google.
