Update: A bit more information about Bing Deals…
A Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews, "Mobile is an increasingly important space, and our mobile search strategy is focused on enabling customers to easily discover, access, and use the information, answers and content they need and want, anytime, anywhere with the convenience of their mobile device. Deals is another example of Bing delivering the things consumers want, right inside their search experience."
When asked about how deals providers can go about getting included in the mix, the spokesperson told us, "Bing is partnering with The Dealmap to aggregate deals from across the web. We’re working to expand the Bing Deals offering, so we can eventually add new providers and deals in the future."
The deals will be integrated into regular Bing search results. "When searching for a restaurant or business, if those venues offer deals, you’ll see a deals icon next to your result in the local search experience. There is currently a delay as the system updates, but Deals will begin to show up soon."
Original Article: Bing has released Bing Deals for the desktop and Bing Mobile. This is a deals aggregation feature, which provides access to over 200,000 unique offers in over 14,000 cities across the U.S. according to the Bing team.
This includes deals from big names like Groupon and LivingSocial and others. The DealMap, which Bing has partnered with on this feature, says it has nearly 300 unique local and daily deal sources going through its DealExchange platform.
"Instead of creating our own program, we’ve partnered with The Dealmap, to launch Bing deals," the team says. "Bing’s mission is to help you cut through the clutter of the Web to make decisions more quickly – whether that’s through our own innovations or by teaming up with industry experts. The Dealmap is a leading source for people to find and share the best local deals, so naturally it made sense for us to team up with them to bring you the best experience."
A nice feature is that you can look at Deals nearby from the mobile version. While I can get to Bing Deals from m.bing.com (iPhone/Android), I’m not seeing it on the desktop version of the search engine yet.
"With one click, you’ll see the top daily deals featuring the very best offers in your metro area," says Bing. "And by top deals we’re talking generally 30%-50% off! These are deals you definitely don’t want to miss so we made a special tab so checking is easy."
"The DealExchange is the most comprehensive platform for sourcing, distributing and monetizing local deals," said Chandu Thota, co-founder of The Deal Map. "Working with a technology leader like Microsoft bolsters our leadership position and highlights a period of explosive growth for The Dealmap. "We look forward to continuing to collaborate with Microsoft in ways that will deliver value to consumers and continue to rapidly grow our business."
We’ve reached out to Bing for additional details about the service, and will update when we hear back. We’d reach out to Groupon to ask whether they think this will help Groupon or help Groupon’s competition, but as CEO Andrew Mason made pretty clear, they won’t answer questions like that.
Either way, this could be a huge feature for Bing. Bluntly put, this could be a reason to use Bing Mobile, especially.
A new report from BIA/Kelsey says daily deal spending could top $6 billion by $2015.