Microsoft’s Rival to Google Places

Microsoft recently announced the launch of Bing Business Portal with the aim of rivalling Google Places.

It was reported in early April that Microsoft was gaining ground on Google in the battle of the search engines with their market share through Bing and Yahoo reaching 30% of all searches for the first time. In the same period, Google saw its dominance reduced by 3%, falling below 65% for the first time.

Source: Experian Hitwise

Find out how Bing Business Portal compares to Google Places by reading the rest of my article.

Bing Business Portal is still currently in BETA mode but it’s already looking like a great tool for small business owners to promote their companies online.

Below is a list of five new features Bing Business Portal boasts that you won’t find on Google Places.

A free mobile-friendly website

Bing are offering a free mobile-friendly website for small businesses that claim a local listing via the Bing Business Portal. With more and more people using smartphones and accessing the web on the move, this is a fantastic incentive to list your company.

Faster listing verification

Bing aim to allow you to verify your listing by post in just 3-4 days. This compares very favourably to Google Places which states a time frame of around 2-3 weeks for your verification code to arrive in the mail.

Share your deals and special offers

You can add a range of deals to your listing on Bing Business Portal and the clever part is it allows you to share them on Facebook as well as being highlighted on the search engine results on Bing.com

Add extra users to your account

One of the main gripes about Google Places is that it’s fiddly to get someone else to set up your listing on your behalf. Microsoft has recognised this and added a very handy feature that lets you add additional users to your Bing Business Portal account.

Link to your social media profiles

As part of your business listing you are also able to add links to your Twitter and Facebook accounts which lets potential customers see your updates and get more of an insight into your business.

Learn more about Bing Business Portal now and register your business for free.

If you liked this article you may also want to read my Google Places top 10 tips

This entry was posted on Monday, April 18th, 2011 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Local Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.