Duplicate content is a common occurrence on the web and in many cases can hurt search engine rankings. While the search engines may not always technically penalize webmasters for duplicate content, there are still a lot of ways it can hurt.
WebProNews is covering the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East in New York, where representatives from the three major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) discussed how their respective web properties handle duplicate content issues. Following are some takeaways from each.
Microsoft is either taking the holiday marketing approach or the Twilight/Vampire trend approach with its latest commercial. The title is Bing: Vampire Decision Engine.
The company uploaded the new commercial to its (Google-owned) YouTube channel. Accompanying the video is a short description:
"When you're looking for a restaurant that is family friendly, romantic, or maybe something with an otherworldly atmosphere, use Bing's reviews to stop searching and start deciding."
As previously reported, Microsoft has made deals with both Facebook and Twitter, which will see Bing feature updates from both networks in real-time search efforts. To me, this says that social media just became an even bigger part of search engine marketing, particularly with Google also on board with Twitter and rumored to be talking to Facebook.
Microsoft must be really into Halloween this year, as they've relesaed two "Halloween oriented" commercials for their latest search engine, Bing.
Disclaimer: This article was originally written before Google made its announcement, and has been updated to reflect that.
Google and Microsoft have both inked deals with Twitter and Microsoft has also inked one with Facebook to integrate Twitter and Facebook updates into Bing search results. Google will be adding tweets to search results.
MSN.com gets about 85 million unique monthly visitors in the US alone, according to Compete. That's significantly more than AOL.com. So now that Microsoft has unveiled a redesign to it, it stands to reason that a lot of people are going to be affected by it. Microsoft calls the new design MSN's most significant home page redesign in over a decade.
Microsoft has launched some new features for the mobile version of the Bing search engine, which is available at m.bing.com. These include features related to the NFL and to travel.
The NFL feature lets the user type a team or player and see upcoming games, stats, and scores. If you use the feature while a game is being played, you can get real-time updates on the plays. The feature is only available in the U.S.
National Geographic and Weather.com are not, if we're to be honest, nearly as trendy as something like Twitter or Facebook. Still, both entities garner a significant amount of respect (and a significant number of page views), and Bing recently received a sort of nod from each of them.
iCrossing has shared the findings from its Enterprise Natural Search Share Index. This is a look at natural search traffic to enterprise level sites, based on a large sample of Fortune 1000 companies across all major verticals.
Microsoft unleashed Windows 7 onto the public today, and the company's Bing team has released some downloadable wallpaper things for the operating system. The themes are based on the images that the search engine uses on its homepage.