Bing And Facebook: Friends?

The search engine, Bing, has now allied itself with Facebook in the form of a novel function. Whenever someone logged on to their Facebook account searches something on Bing, there may be listings with their friends faces below them. Those friends have 'liked' a specific search result on Bing. This provides a searcher with potential references to contractors as well as personal reviews of products and services. Like any tool, this can be used for good or evil purposes. Differentiate these uses, and you'll be able to filter the results to your own liking.

The Good

Say you would like to add a wooden deck to your back porch. Searching on Bing, you find that your cousin has 'liked' the local contractors' search result with his Facebook account. After talking to your cousin about the search result, he lets you know that he chose that specific contractor after looking for a couple of weeks to find the cheapest and most reliable builder. This service has allowed you to forgo the hassle and headache that most people have to deal with when choosing a service or product.

The Bad

This new feature allows each listing on Bing to potentially sway a searchers' choice in deciding which search result to click on first. Shady companies may hire people to 'like' their Bing result with different Facebook accounts to get more hits to their site, and possibly even more sales. Having these 'fake' Facebook accounts mixed in with the genuine friends, this exploit muddies the otherwise clear waters of the new Bing feature. Seeing people below search results can also raise visibility to a cause or heighten awareness to a company. Those who just go through Bing and 'like' every search result that they can click on cause the effectiveness of this tool to lower to the point of uselessness. Some users will actually find that they sever contact with someone on Facebook to keep from seeing their profile picture on Bing.

The Ugly

Having a new way to get clicks on Bing, companies that have been slow to create a Facebook will now come out of the woodwork. This will create a flood of new and useless entries to muck up an already mixed bag of search results. Sheer patience is the only virtue to have, helping you go through page after page of mixed results while looking for quality listings. Good or bad, this new functionality is definitely something that everyone can use. Whether it's used to further something honorable, or to pursue a greedy goal, the merging functionality of Bing and Facebook will alter search engine history.

Fred Meek is a professional Austin SEO consultant in Austin Texas. For more information go to Austin Search Engine Optimization.

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