Bing maps finally start inviting local business listings
It’s been a breeze to add a local business listing to Google Maps for a long time and they’ve made umpteen changes to the interface since it was launched. Bing has been slower off the mark (in the UK, anyway) but they’ve finally started inviting listings.
For some reason, Bing have decided to use listings data from third party 118 Information rather than collecting and maintaining their own database. A benefit of this approach (for business owners) is that your listing will potentially show up on all these services, in addition to bing.com:
- 118118.com and via 118118 voice services
- BT.com and via 118500 and also in The Phone Book (they still print that?!)
- Yahoo.co.uk
- Scoot.com
- Multimap.co.uk
- Touchlocal.co.uk
- 192.com
- City-visitor.com
- Also satnav systems such as BMW
There’s plenty of information around the web on how to get better visibility in Google Maps (check Tom Critchlow’s presentation at the excellent Think Visibility conference earlier this year) but it’s not clear yet how to influence listings on these alternative services. Google’s listings pull in related information, reviews and links from all over web. By comparison the Bing listings are pretty thin.
Getting listed
Although Google still dominates search in the UK – their image search alone gets more traffic than Bing does in total – it’s still worth making sure your business is listed. The process is pretty straightforward. Head over to their request form and search for your business. If it’s listed already you’ll have an opportunity to check and edit your details. If it’s not there yet you can add the details from scratch.
118 will call within 24 hours to confirm your listing. I wouldn’t bet against this call involving some encouragement to buy ‘enhanced’ position. (I’ll update this post when I’ve received my call.)
Tags: 118, bing, google maps, maps