Can search engines effectively move into the social realm? Bing things so.
The search engine will soon show which links have been “liked” by the internet surfer’s friends, Microsoft announced today at the Bing Search event in San Francisco, Calif.
Since October, Bing has integrated “liked” content from Facebook into its search results in a separate content area that says “Liked by your Facebook friends.” Side note: For us, the special Facebook “like” results didn’t show up all the time—but did show up when we searched “tech” and “social media.”
Coming soon, Bing says they’ll show U.S. users which individual page/URLS have been liked by their Facebook friends as a part of the regular search results. Therefore, Facebook “liked” results will no longer be relegated to a special box, rather it will be matriculated into the regular search area.
Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft’s online services division, says Bing is looking for ways to make search more social and relevant. She wrote in a blog post:
“Our focus on reimagining what search can be to better respond to what you’re doing has not changed. To do that, we are building new technologies that help Bing figure out what people like you are trying to do, and match that with the right experiences to help get things done.”
Not only will the upcoming search results show individual links that are liked, but Bing says your friends’ Facebook activity is “influencing ranking on Bing and will lead to personalized search rankings,” according to Searchengineland.com.
An important note is you can opt out of all Facebook integrations. In the upper left-hand corner it clearly shows you are signed into Facebook with the little blue logo, making it easy to figure out how to take the social out of the experience.
Bing is the third largest search engine, behind Yahoo and Google.
Do you think this will help the search engine gain popularity? Is social useful when it comes to search?
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