Last week, our roundup focused on all things Search that was in the news. This week, we wanted to talk more about all things tech this week… be a little more geeky with our highlights; but before we get totally irresponsible and start talking about the all-new-iPad2 … lets see what happened last week in search:
Bing incorporates natural language search capabilities
Bing incorporated New natural language capabilities for shopping in the browser this last week. From their feature update blog post:
Sometimes shopping can be overwhelming. With so many choices, at so many different price points, you continually have to refine your search to find something within your budget.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could just type what you’re thinking into the search box? Say, “Air Jordans under $100” or “Hudson jeans under $200″ and let Bing do the work. With improvements to natural language search arriving in Bing, now you can.
Other links:
Google strong-arms Yelp
The search giant is unfairly benefiting by running Yelp’s local business reviews on the Google Places page without any compensation, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman told the Telegraph newspaper. But Stoppelman says Google is offering only a take-it-or-leave-it response.
Other links:
Good or bad, Facebook is now providing the ability to comment web-wide using your Facebook account. SearchEngineLand explores this new development.
Content sites that once benefited from raucous discussion in comments have complained that some of the conversation has been drained off by social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Facebook today announced changes to its Comment Box widget that will plug the hole a little and keep at least some of the comments next to the original content.
Other links:
Over at SearchEngineLand, Debra Mastaler offers up a Link Building Blueprint that employs a technique she terms “utility linking”…
This week’s blueprint tactic is known as “utility linking”, it’s a great way to increase your backlinks and help insulate your pages from algo shifts. (Previous article: A Link Building Blueprint: The Foundation.)
The basic premise behind utility linking is simple: using various pre-set phrases plus your keywords, you find sites to add your content to.