bing.com – Microsoft’s response to Google Universal Search
You may notice in your site analytic reporting a referring website called “bing.com”. This is Microsoft’s new search engine which is where users are now directed when going to live.com. Bing.com is meant to be Microsoft’s answer to Google in hopes to reclaim some of its continually diminishing market share in recent years.
According to reports, bing.com is primarily focused on 4 sectors of search:
- planning a trip
- finding a local business
- researching a health condition
- making a purchase decision
You find when using bing.com some peculiar similarities with Google search such as the font and color display of listings and their basic construct. What’s different however is the left sidebar which automatically displays sets of similar phrases to what you just searched, much like a tagging system. Also different, and most notably so, is that bing.com does not mix multi-media types in its searches like Google Universal Search does. What this means is that video clips are not going to appear in your searches unless you specifically use the Video search option.
I don’t plan to follow up with this much. I don’t think it’s a big deal but I did deem it important for you to know why bing.com may be appearing in your site analytic reports and to understand some basic things about it. If you want to stay on top of this you can start by visiting ReadWriteWeb which is where I sourced most of the information in this post.
Baron BMW Blog on iFrames and Facebook
Here is a car dealer blog but it is attached to their website using an iFrame. This presents a few problems, but overall Baron is doing nifty stuff and using Facebook well too so far.
With the iFrame, you diminish your SEO influence. An iFrame is like a box inside a room. It’s its own room, but secluded from everything around it. You can link to the blog’s main page, but from an SEO standpoint you are really linking to a box you can not see inside. A search engine knows it is there, but can not see the contents.
You can link to a page within the blog but then you loose the website shell meant to surround it, so you forgo the visitor experience you initially set out for. Additionally, when you link from the blog, visitors remain in the iFrame unless you insert the parent syntax within the frame tag.
target="_parent"
Another issue is that not all systems and browser support frames. Most today do, with the exception of mobile devices, and most blogs naturally do well on a mobile device. With the iFrame you risk mobile visitors not being able to access your blog at all.
From what I can tell, this blogs looks quite new. It has a few posts and the blogger is clearly sharing himself in addition to the dealership. This is good. Although you must be conscientious of what you publish. The NINJA post pushes the bubble. It will appeal to some, but could throw off others still important to the dealership. There is a threshold for everything, including dealer blogs.
Their facebook group has 53 members, including me. I just became a fan. I look forward to seeing how FB shapes the auto industry. I like what Baron is doing off the bat.
exoticcars blog on myblogsite.com
Came across a car dealer blog today being run on myblogsite.com. There is a big Google AdSense ad smack in front of your face when you visit. Curious if this is placed there by the blog master or by FortuneCity which appears to be running the blog site.
This looks to me like the dealer/blogger discovered the site the other day, set it up, posted a blog and left. For all we know the user never returned.
I see this occasionally. It probably occurs more than we know. When I first started blogging I created multiple new blogs over the course of a few months. It took a while to find which information to publish where. As I did, some of the blogs faded out, but others remained. BlogPro Automotive is really the only one that thrives today from those initial months. It has come a long way for sure. You can visit the original BlogPro site on blogger.
Today I run several sites and am always feeling them out as things progress. It takes time for a blog to evolve. Like raising a child or even growing up yourself. You have to feel it out over time. Conditions and circumstances change and you must re-establish your voice. Listen. Respond. Listen. Respond.
However, consistency proves to pay off over time too. The longer you stick with your niche, however large or small, the more can come out of it. I think that DealerRefresh is a good example of this. Jeff Kershner has been around longer than most, and his tune resounds well with many. When you change your tune, you go sideways (or backwards for some). I know that I have experienced this.
So, where do you take a site like the exoticcars’s blog? I would begin by getting off of that platform. Our WordPress system on BlogPro would suffice. I then would get my logo up there and apply a good-looking theme to the site. There are numerous free themes and themes you can purchase. Themes are like a dress you slip on to your WordPress blog or website. Finally, start posting content on a regular basis. During your first six months to a year you must be posting 2-3 times a week mimally in the dealer world to truly compete.
