Bing Adds Recipes to Search Results

Bing is now giving special placement to recipes in response to some food-related searches:

Bing pulls from a number of popular recipe websites (delish.com, MyRecipes.com, epicurious.com.com, etc.) to bring you correlating recipes that you can sift through by holiday, meals, ratings, and my personal favorite, convenience (with a 10 month old at home, quick is key) and much more.

Plug in a potential ingredient, such as sausage, or a food item such as chocolate chip cookies, and you’ll see links to recipes embedded within the regular search results, within a special section:

Clicking on any particular recipe or the “recipes” link above the section takes you to a new “recipes task page,” where Bing provides nutritional information and calculates the relative calories and fat content of recipes. You can see an example of this deep dive here:

The page also allows you to narrow recipes by star rating, by main ingredient and other options including for some, if they are “kid friendly.”

Want to access the recipe search feature directly? That’s not possible, at the moment. You have to hope it appears in response to an ordinary search. However, to increase the odds, add the word “recipe” to your search. For example, searching for macaroni and cheese doesn’t trigger the box — but macaroni and cheese recipes does.

Even though this seems like a minor thing, it’s an appealing and useful feature that may attract loyalty, frequency or some new usage.

Here’s a video from Bing that explains the feature more:

Bing Maps Steals The Cool Crown From Google

Microsoft has had a collection of mapping tools and assets that haven't been fully utilized or received the play (or usage) of Google Maps. But in an announcement today Bing Maps breaks new ground in online mapping even as it plays a bit of catch up with Google.

First, Bing Maps is introducing "Street Side" in 56 US metro areas, with the ambition to go global eventually. This is the Microsoft answer to Google Street View: immersive street-level photography that, like Street View, allows users to "walk down the street" and explore neighborhoods in cities. Microsoft began Street Side at roughly the same time as Street View but hadn't released anything (to date) other than this limited demo site.

The environment that Microsoft has created is richer than Street View and brings "augmented reality" into Maps in a compelling way. Microsoft has also utilized its 3D mapping assets in creating the new experience. Here's how the Microsoft press material describes the technology behind the new Maps experience:

Photosynth and Silverlight are the underlying technologies in Bing Maps that connect everything and help provide the more seamless experience. Based on Seadragon and Photo Tourism concepts, Photosynth lets us literally "stitch" together photographs to provide more realistic view of locations as they appear in real life. Photosynth-enabled Streetside imagery is built on geometric models that are reconstructed underneath the imagery to provide a truly 3D experience that shows locations as they are in real life.

The one "catch" is that you need to install Microsoft Silverlight to make it all work. But once installed the new Bing Maps beta site enables a wide range of experiences, search and discovery tools that haven't been available (or maybe possible) previously.

In addition there's an "apps gallery" that enable data overlays directly on the map. All of the current modules are Microsoft created but the company will enable third parties to integrate their content into Bing Maps (e.g., Yelp reviews) in the near term.

Google Gained Market Share in China in Last Six Months

Google has been closing the gap on Chinese search engine leader Baidu over the last six months according to web analytics company StatCounter. The firm's research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that at the end of 2009 Baidu held 56% of the Chinese market compared to Google's 43%.

"Google has made impressive gains in China since July last when it was at 30% compared to Baidu's 68%," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "Our analysis suggests that given Google's recent strong performance, market share is certainly not the reason behind its threat to leave China at this time."

At the end of 2009 Yahoo! and Bing's combined share of the Chinese search market stood at just 1.18%.

Despite significant gains in China in the last six months, Google's market share there still lags its global penetration where it has over 90% of the market.

The analysis is based on 24 million search engine referring clicks from China which were collected between July and December 2009.

SEO Tip – Optimize Your Images for Better Rankings

You have all been told for years that you must add lots and lots of images to your sites. You’ve learned that visitors enjoy looking at pictures of houses, that blog readers are pulled in by having large images at the top of a post.

But is it possible to bring more traffic in from the search engines because of how you use images on your sites? The answer is yes. Today we’ll cover a few ways to help your site rank better using images.

Before we continue, take six minutes and watch these three Google Webmaster videos:

1. Should I expect increased traffic if I optimize my images?
2. Matt Cutts Discusses the Importance of alt Tags
3. Does Google consider the URL of an image?

That pretty well sums up this post…oh, you want more? Fine, keep reading.

Use Descriptive File Names for Images

In video 1, Matt flat out tells us – YES OPTIMIZING IMAGES WILL INCREASE TRAFFIC. What else do I need to say to convince you?

Matt suggests using descriptive file names for your images. Don’t keep the bland,boring name your camera created, what good is a name like “dsc00234.jpg”? You should use a carefully thought out descriptive name. You shouldn’t get too carried away with long file names, but I do suggest using multiple words. Of course, keep in mind our tip from last week and use dashes to separate the words in your file name. Possibly use something like: “3576-lakeview-street-homerville-tennessee-kitchen-1.jpg”.

Use ALT Tags for Images

In Video 2, Matt reinforces something I and others have already told you – ALT tags for your images are important. However, he does tell us something new; it’s OK to use slightly longer, more descriptive text instead of just “cat”, “house” or “motorcycle.” So what does that mean for you? It means that when you take pictures of a house you are listing, you have an opportunity to really do a good job of describing the property through photos, in a way the search engines not only understand, they want. Consider putting something like this in your ALT tags: “123 brookehaven road, Jasper, Wyoming – master bedroom – MLS 123456″. Be creative in your description, use words people will be using when they search the web.

Image File URLs

In video 3, Matt reminds us that the URLs of files help the search engines figure out what is in the picture. Depending on how your site is constructed, this might take a little bit of planning. Rather than just drop all you images in a generic folder named “images”, or named for the date you uploaded them (like WordPress does by default), perhaps you should consider creating a special structure to store them in. You could get pretty detailed if you wanted to take the time. You may want to create a folder structure like what’s shown here, based on your state, county & city names. Of course, YOU should know your web traffic better than I do, use names you KNOW people use in searches, based on your keyword research.

BONUS Information

How well did you listen to video 3? Go back and listen to it again, starting from about the 25 second mark, ending at about the 40 second mark. OCR and Meta-data for the images? Now we’re talking.

OCR?

OCR, if you don’t know, stands for Optical Character Recognition. Matt’s comment implies that Google is able to READ and understand the text with in your images. How can you use this? Start adding a crisp, clear title to all of your images. Make it easy for them, place the text on a plain background and use a simple, non-swirly font.

Meta-data?

OMG! Not more meta tags! Take a deep breath, relax. It’s not more geeky tags. Image meta-data is often added automatically by digital cameras and it can be edited by many image editing tools to add all sorts of information. The image to the right is a screen shot taken from within Adobe Photoshop, but the software that came with your camera may also allow you to edit your files like this. Place your descriptive text within these fields before you upload them.

I know this was a lot of information, but I’m confidant you can manage it.

When working with images, keep the fortune cookie in mind; how it looks on the outside is important, but sometimes it’s what you can’t see that is more important.