How to Grab Your Local Listing in Bing
Last week, Microsoft unleashed its brand new search engine onto the market. It’s called Bing and, contrary to what the name suggests, you do have to take it seriously. Even if you’re not planning to give up your Google search habit, you’ll still want to familiarize yourself with Bing to understand how you can help your site rank in their local search index. To learn a bit more about the engine, you can read about the keynote Q&A Microsoft president Dr. Qi Lu gave at last week’s Search Marketing Advanced show in Seattle.
However, what I really wanted to see was how Bing handles local search.
Microsoft’s not known for the creating the hippest search products, so I was curious to see how Bing was handling local search right out of the gate. A search for [Albany, NY Mexican] brings up all the usual suspects that my palette remembers living in Upstate, NY. You’ll notice that the search engine results page (SERP) looks pretty rudimentary compared to Google and Yahoo! (not much more exciting than a Yellow Pages search), however, I really like the refinement options Bing offers on the left-hand side. They take an approach similar to Ask.com where they allow you to sort your search by Rating, Price, Cuisine, Atmosphere, Reservations, Payment and Parking options.
Once you refine your search, Bing allows you to click through to individual business listings. These individual pages give local searchers handy business “scorecards”, 1-click driving directions (a pretty awesome feature), a 3D Bird’s Eye View of the business in Maps, customer reviews, and more.
Why did I point all the refinement features and options Bing shows users? Because it’s important to know what users are seeing so that you can fill out your own local search listings to take advantage of all the refinement options.
So let’s do it.
To list your local business in Bing, head to the Bing Local Listing Center. From there, you’ll be able to check to see if you already have a local listing set up. If you do, you can modify it. If not, now’s the perfect time to create one.
Once you start creating/modifying your account. Bing will ask you to log in using your Windows ID. If you don’t have one, you’ll have to create one. From there, you’ll be asked to enter in your contact and business information, as well as a laundry list of supplemental information like additional phone numbers, Web pages, email address, hours of operation, payment methods, photos, etc. There’s also a long section for additional information like your company tagline, business description, brands carried (if applicable), specialties, affiliations, languages spoken, parking options, etc. It’s always in your best interest to create as complete a profile as you can.
From there, you can select up to six prioritized categories to place your business in based on associated keywords. You’ll also be able to supply information about features, cuisine type, prices, atmosphere, etc. Make sure you fill these out the best you can so that you can take advantage of Bing’s great local search refinement options. If you list it as an option, you won’t show up for it when a user looks for it!
Once that’s complete, Bing will ask you to review your business listing on the map, fixing the pushpin locator, if necessary. If everything looks good, submit your listing and you’re done. That’s it! Freel free to congratulate yourself on a well used 10-15 minutes.
It’s really important that you take the time to complete accurate business listings in Google, Yahoo, Bing and the other third-party service providers. The more accurate information there is about your company out there, the better chances your customers are going to find you. And when it only takes a few minutes, is there really any excuse not to give your Web site the best possible chance at ranking?
No. There’s not.
Great post Lisa. With all the news about Bing there has not been much said about their local features. I’d add that its a good idea to review your information even if you already had a listing with Live. After reading this post I reviewed our listing and found that the location pin needed to be reset as well as a few odds and ends.
Thanks,
Josh
Not to mention that search engines are incorporating local results into the “regular” organic results more often (ie the Google 10-pack) and add in the fact that search users are increasingly using local-related terms and you can’t emphasize this point enough.
Nice review Lisa. I hadn’t heard anything about Bing so it was interesting to hear your thoughts on it. Thank you for giving us a taste of what it’s like. I’ll need to go check it out now.
Lisa,
Bing has labeled itself a “decision engine”. Could it be that they want to create a special profile and find a niche compared to Google’s general search engine? I think that I will use Bing when I am planning for a trip, visiting a new location and want to find out great places. The advertisers must be interested in this new feature. I read that Bing had already passed Yahoo search in usage. Could this be true?
How do you think comparison sites like Yelp and Pricerunner will react to this new type of search behavior?
[...] claim your business listing. Lisa Barone over at Small Business Trends did a nice post today on How to Grab Your Local Listing in Bing. She provides a good explanation of the process and links to get it all set up. Take a few [...]
I feel like a complete idiot, but, how do I add a business that is NOT based in the United States? The drop down for ‘States’ doesn’t list Provinces and there isn’t even a ‘Country’ field. I cannot find anything anywhere that addresses this problem, or even explains why you can’t add businesses outside the states (Even though the option to ’search within Canada’ is right there). Makes no sense. Anyone know anything on this?
Great information Lisa. We will definitely get to work on getting our listing on Bing. Thanks for sharing.
@Bronwyn I took a look at the Bing.com/maps in Canada and none of the listings including the recommended searches (Tim Hortons, Vancouver etc.) that Bing offers had additional information which would lead me to believe that the option to claim your listing is not yet available in Canada.
A search on Twitter turns up a few others asking about it but there doesn’t seem to be any official info anywhere.
Its unfortunate, but on the bright side you know your competitors haven’t claimed their listings yet either.
Ben Weissenstein one of the most up and coming entrepreneurs in the country. He’s 19 and already been featured on Dr. Phil and Entrepreneur Magazine for his company: Grand Slam Garage Sales and is about to get much more national press and possibly even a reality show. PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO BEN’S CHANNEL benceogs90 AND FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER AT http://www.twitter.com/benweissenstein.
Hey Lisa,
Great work with this post. You’ve taught us the new basics with Bing in this always changing search marketing landscape, but also landed on Page 1 of Google results for Bing Local Search. I appreciate that you avoid getting into the arguments about if Bing can usurp Google and all that. What matters is how we can use it, use it quickly to help our businesses. Thanks for cutting to the chase right away.
Taking my client to Bing this week…
Grab Your Local Listing in Bing by Lisa Barone…
Bing Local Search results can help you get your business in front of customers. Like Google and Yahoo, it is one more service to watch and use.
Lisa Barone gives a quick tutorial….
Thanks for the heads up, Lisa. I also heard so much about Bing. Am really curios now, what other features it has to offer.
I’ve tried using Bing for awhile, but i doubt i could use it full time. I like how they finally got a google calculator equivalent, the video is pretty good too, but occasionally i find myself needing to go back to Google for searches. Most of the time i was more than satisfied with the searches, especially the little pop up bubble of info next to the searches, it also provides strict search results so it may prove to be a good competition to Google in the future.
First time to hear about Bing, Lisa! The Bing word doesn’t seem to be really appealing but I know this is worth the try. Will check this out!
[...] have pointed out questionably unoriginal design choices, others are starting to provide advice on how to claim your business in Bing’s local results. Looks like… a search [...]
Great info, Lisa. Small businesses should grab their own local listings in every search engine and you’re making it easy. I’ve pointed BuyerZone readers to your site so they can get in on the action as well.
Great post. Bing is another great tool for driving local traffic. I have been recommending it as well as Google Maps to all my business clients. I go as far as helping them create their business listings along with the other services we provide.
Great post on how to effectively use Bing to get local listings. There are a few other good tools Bing offers for small business – like their Webmaster Central and Product Feed. I wrote a blog post about it as well because it’s a very important topic for any small business.
Yes, there is a good excuse to not claim your listing, when Bing doesn’t allow it! If you are a company registered in the U.S. but headquartered outside of the U.S. as we are, in Beijing, you cannot get a listing. Hopefully they will take care of this problem as they continue the roll-out, but this sure seems to be a huge problem, as our Canadian brethren pointed out above.
[...] you to Lisa Barone of Small Biz Trends for the tip! Related Posts[Video] Google’s FREE Local Business Center65% of all Searches are [...]
[...] BING – Topic of the week. Is this the next best thing? Bing is Microsoft’s new search engine that is positioned to better compete with Google. Bing has a different algorithm and newer features. Here is how a SMB can claim their listing on Bing similar to how they would claim their local listing on Google through Google’s Local Business Center. how-to-grab-your-local-listing-in-bing.html [...]
[...] thought about Bing’s system of mailing the pin and decided that it did make a bit more sense to do the mailing since a phone [...]
[...] service that is free to use. Credit to Small Biz Trends for this tip in their article called How to Grab Your Local Listing in Bing. Everything you need to know is in there including a link to the Bing local sign up [...]
[...] you should get your free local listing now. Lisa Barone at Small Business Trends wrote a post on How to Grab Your Local Listing in Bing. She provides a great explanation of the process and how to get a Bing local listing set up for [...]
I’ve been focusing on Google Local Search, so thanks for filling in the gaps with Bing. Good to have something else to work on.
I wants to add my local business listing at bing but when we submit the form then bing shows the listing of only american cities although i wants to add my listing in india. Plz help me, i am waiting for your response you can contact me through email.
Thanks
[...] in mind that Google isn’t the only search engine in town. Here (again) is how to claim your local listing in Microsoft’s new Bing search engine. And here’s a great writeup of how to claim your listing on Yahoo!. Don’t [...]
Hello,
I want to add my local business to bing.com How do i do that ?
can anyone help me to do that please?
Regards,
Mihir
ask4itsolutions.com
Bing and Yahoo both have left Canadians out in the cold ( no pun intended) to allow us to add local listings to their maps. I guess only Google cares about Canadians.
If you’re in Canada and you want your business listed in Bing local listings. You still can do so. There is a way. Read the article on our site. It will help you understand how bing verfies your listings.
Hope this helps
Still trying to find out how to submit my Canadian business with bing local listing…
Niaz Abbas