Redmond, Washington — In a surprising turn of events, Microsoft’s Bing is revving up its search game by adding some heavy artillery thanks to Yelp. Relentlessly striving to out-pace its arch rival Google in the search advertising business, Microsoft and Yelp this week announced the partnership, which will incorporate social review site’s content to Bing search results.
Moving forward, the ambitious move by Microsoft, disclosed on a Bing Community blog post June 14, follows a similar strategy by Google to incorporate Zagat reviews into its Google+ Local Pages search function, which was announced last month. Now, people using Bing to search for information about local businesses will be able to view excerpts from Yelp reviews on the right side of the screen, along with photos and business information, and other details will be used to surface content to Bing Local search users in the United States.
“As one of the Web’s leading local listing services, Yelp is a great resource that helps connect you with local businesses and restaurants,” the Bing team wrote in a blog post last week. “Scanning reviews from real people can often make the difference between the perfect night out and wishing you had stayed in.”
Among other things, the Bing Local search page will soon be displaying a “Powered by Yelp” tag on a page replete with details about a restaurant culled from Yelp’s website. Users will see recently submitted (truncated) reviews by customers, the general description of the business, the business’ overall rating, a map of the location provided by Bing Maps and other assorted information.
Describing the essentials of this association, Bing General Manager Mike Nichols said he expects that the inclusion of Yelp’s trove of information will help bring up-to-date, reliable reviews to users. “Enabling people to do more with search involves building a spectrum of features and data that people trust, and teaming up with Yelp is another important step in helping Bing deliver great value to customers,” he said.
Besides, Yelp CEO and co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman agreed, “We are thrilled that established brands like Bing recognize the value that Yelp communities bring to the local search experience.”
Nevertheless, Bing has made some significant foray lately into making aspects of its search more social with the search engine’s recent three-column redesign that includes related content pulled from Facebook and Twitter familiars. The addition of Yelp to its Local search service should empower users with an even more relevant source information when looking for something more than the average generic blue link.
Lately, Bing and other search engines have struggled to grow in comparison to the dominant Google. As a matter of fact, this announcement of the Bing partnership follows Monday’s reveal that Yelp will be more deeply integrated into Apple’s iOS 6.