Bing Archive

Sadly in just a few days Microsoft’s Bing Cashback program will be closed. The doors on this awesome cash back program will be closed and locked and a sign will indicate that the program is no more. Many of us deal hunters have received some very nice amounts from Microsoft and for that we thank Steve Ballmer and crew. The Bing Cashback program had such amazing promise but sadly was executed poorly and therefore failed.

Last week I grabbed nearly $50 from Bing on my mattress purchase. So get out there and shop – here’s the Bing Cashback stores list.

If you buy anything online and aren’t using a coupon or a cashback site, you are throwing money away on every purchase. A simple example… Office Depot offers 10% cashback on Bing – you buy a $100 whiteboard, you score $10. You buy a ring for your significant other and you can score way more than $10. Keep the money inside your startup and use the cashback for office parties or other fun team events.

When Microsoft first launched their cashback search, I called it a copy of Fatwallet. Good Internet dealhunters know all about Fatwallet and how they share the affiliate commissions they earn with you. I’ve earned hundreds of dollars using Fatwallet over the years. For example, if you fly with Jetblue, start your purchase with Fatwallet and earn 2% back on the ticket.

Dealhunters have loved Bing Cashback – there have been events where people have earned upwards of 35% back on eBay purchases. I’ve earned a few hundred dollars and overall the process was very easy.

Sadly today, Bing has announced that they will be terminating the Bing Cashback program effective July 30. Bing SVP Yusuf Mehdi noted in the post that they never saw the broad adoption that they were looking for. It will be interesting to see if Bing search takes a hit once cashback is removed. I know many dealhunters who would perform hundreds of searches to find the best cashback percentages.

Mehdi notes, “In lots of ways, this was a great feature – we had over a thousand merchant partners delivering great offers to customers and seeing great ROI on their campaigns, and we were taking some of the advertising revenue and giving it back to customers. But after a couple of years of trying, we did not see the broad adoption that we had hoped for.”

Looks like we are back to using Fatwallet and eBates for cashback going forward.

Slickdeals members have posted their earnings – here are a couple of the top earners:

• nafaught – $2800
• kimcheefondue $2373.59
• TheEdge $1286.11
• chuckd (and mom)- $6828.32

Leave a comment if you used BCB and how much you saved.

Yandex has started powering search contextual ads on Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. Here is a screenshot and link to search result page on Bing.com for a search query “Туры” (Tours) that displays Yandex.Direct advertisements both above the Bing.com’s search results and alongside them (to the right).

Yandex has announced a deal with Microsoft’s search engine Bing on its blog. The Yandex.Direct ads has been tested on Bing since September 2009.  The blog post said that “in so far, a share of Bing in Russia is not that big, but [Yandex] is very glad that one of the world’s largest companies has decided to monetize in RuNet with a help of Yandex’s contextual technologies”.

Bing holds 0.8% search market share in Russia, behind Yandex with 58.3%, Google with 23.0%, Mail.ru with 10.2%, and Rambler with 3.8%, according to LiveInternet.ru. Yandex held 54.5% of searches in Russia, Google – 34.5%, Mail.ru – 7.4%, Rambler – 1.9%, Bing – 0.4%, said comScore last August.

Since the Russian contextual advertising market is vauled at $400 million per year, Yandex powering search ads on Bing will translate in several million in additional annual revenues for both Yandex and Microsoft.

Continue reading “Yandex to Power Search Ads on Bing” »

We’ve written before about the big deals you can sometimes find using the Bing cashback search. Tonight I found (via Fatwallet) that you can grab 15% on some purchases at Dell by starting at Bing.

Click here to view the search results for Dell on Bing. At the top of the results, you will see a sponsored result for Dell that displays the “Bing Cashback” link. Click that link and the Bing Cashback page will be displayed and then you can select if you want to browse products on the Business side or the Home side.

Here are the terms and conditions that were provided to me tonight:

• Shop at Dell Today and Earn 15% Bing CashBack
• Offer applies to purchases on Dell Home & Home Office and Small & Medium Business on this visit only.
• Purchases from Dell Outlet, Dell Public or Large Enterprise stores are NOT eligible for this offer.
• Dell reserves the right to end or change this offer at any time.
• View all Bing.com CashBack terms and conditions.

Fatwallet users are reporting that the cashback works on any product (e.g. laptop, monitor, mp3, tv, etc.) but as always, check the current terms and conditions before making any purchase to verify that the Bing Cashback applies to the specific item(s) you are interested in.

I haven’t used Bing Cashback yet, but if the 15% is around on Sunday, I may finally purchase a Wii.

Yesterday Microsoft sent an email to advertisers on their adCenter product. The email, copied below, explains what Bing is and how advertisers can benefit from using Bing. They call it a “search experience” and there’s no mention of the term “decision engine”. From what I can tell, the advertising options are the same as any other search engine — text ads above and to the side of search results.

Here’s the email:

So what does Bing do?
Plain and simple, it provides consumers with easy access to relevant information. With new features and more organized results, consumers can spend less time searching and more time finding what’s most relevant to them—like travel, health, cars, and shopping.

What can that mean to you as an advertiser?
Quality leads – Bing helps provide the relevant search results and ads your consumers are interested in. This means you can engage with consumers when they’re ready to research, influence or make a purchase decision.

Last week was all about Bing and Wave – both products the respective companies believe will change something about what we do online. Master search engine journalist Danny Sullivan has an indepth review of Bing which is worth reading (along with his partners comparison review).

In the ”coming soon” video, Microsoft classifies Bing as a “decision engine”. The video makes it seem like a search engine.

Whether you classify Bing as a decision engine or a search engine, whether you compare Bing to Google or any other engine, I have one question for Microsoft….

WHY NOT USE LIVE.COM?

Something tells me that Microsoft hired an expensive agency which eventually (after large payments) came up with the name Bing. I’ve sat through hundreds of these type of presentations over my career and have found it funny how many times the agency misses what’s right in front of them. Now maybe the Bing name was developed in-house. Frankly it really doesn’t matter where Bing came from (note, when I hear bing, I think of the bing-bong chime on the subway when the doors close).

Live is nearly a perfect name. All of the social media techies are in love with “real-time” and Google and other engines have talked about wanting to add more real-time activities into their results. Microsoft could have worked towards branding Live as THE real-time results/decision/search engine. Real-time = Live. Everything inside of Bing could have been included along with the real-time results.

Will Bing be the next Google or the next Cuil? Who knows at this point but what I do know is that had they used the Live name for the brand, they would have been further down the better path.

Perhaps in future ads and videos we will learn what the Bing name actually means and why it was chosen for this new brand.