Bing Local Search Fact Sheet
Research indicates that 62 percent of people use a search engine to find a local business or destination. Finding the best local information online, however, 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 websites. Today’s search engines don’t always help people make the most informed decisions about whether to patronize a local business.
Bing is designed to be different — it provides tools to make it easy and quick to find relevant local content, such as customer reviews aggregated from local content sites, hours of operation for local businesses, one-click directions, maps and traffic reports. Bing also partnered with Yelp to provide searchers with even richer local data — including review snippets, photos and business attributes — from one of the Web’s leading local listing services. Yelp content surfaces in snapshot and in relevant Bing local pages, which are labeled as “Powered by Yelp,” to signify a trustworthy mark for consumers who are looking to make informed decisions. Yelp content also surfaces in snapshot to help people see more trusted reviews in line with search results.
Local Search Features
- Snapshot. Snapshot is the center column of Bing search results, residing between the standard algorithmic results on the left and the social sidebar on the right. Snapshot summarizes relevant information, like celebrity bio information or movie facts, and surfaces that alongside the main search results so people can find what they’re looking for quickly. With links to social content and reviews from Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Klout, LinkedIn and foursquare, people can easily access reviews, maps, menus and more for the restaurant and businesses they’re looking for. With snapshot, Bing does the heavy lifting by organizing the most useful information so people don’t have to hunt through links for information.
- Detailed business listings. Each local listing in Bing provides a snapshot of information to help 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-eye2 or Streetside view of the location, if available.
- Search refinement. Bing refines 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.
- OpenTable. OpenTable is integrated into the local search vertical and allows people to book reservations from snapshot on the search results page or from a restaurant’s Bing local page.
- FanSnap. FanSnap is integrated into the local search vertical, allowing people to purchase tickets to a concert or sporting event through the events details page in Bing.
- Interior Views. Interior Views provide an experience identical to Streetside imagery, but they extend beyond places vehicles can go and allow people to see inside local restaurants and businesses with 360-degree panoramic views. These views are accessible from local search results and in the thumbnail strip on certain businesses’ local listing pages.
- Venue Maps. By teaming up with Nokia, Bing Maps is able to offer nearly 4,200 venue maps in 56 countries across the world, including interior maps of malls, airports, casinos, shopping districts, amusement parks, convention centers, museums, stadiums, universities, hotels and more. Since their launch in November 2010, Bing Venue Maps have been explored millions of times and are used by thousands daily. Some of the most popular categories in the U.S. include shopping districts like Times Square and Fifth Avenue in New York, casinos in Las Vegas, and the largest malls and busiest airports.
