Meeting with Stefan Weitz, Director of Search at Bing
Posted by Al Scillitani on August 21, 2009 – 1:08 pm
This was a very informal and informative meeting. Stefan obviously could not tell us everything that Bing is doing, but everything seemed positive and steps in the right direction.
Here are some of the highlights of the discussion:
Bing is doing a lot of research. They are trying to figure out why most searches hit the back button. They feel improving search results by offering well organized search pages will help.
The biggest issue was lack of traffic. Most in the room stated the traffic they are getting from Bing was great (high converting, high order size, etc..), but there just wasn’t enough of it. Stefan believes Bing Cashback, better results, and other improvements rolling out soon will increase the number of users.
Cashback Shopping has increased over 300%
Bing is continually testing new features and even fonts and colors. Stefan mentioned how amazing little tweaks make. They tested 44 different colors of blue links and each variation had a noticeable different in behavior.
Did you know if you search in Bing and put your curser over the natural search listing you will see a small dot to the right. If you hover over the dot, you will get more information about the site and deep links to find what you are looking for faster.
Anyway, I think the meeting went well overall. It really seems like Bing is interested in improving itself by improving their results. It will take a lot of time and testing, but I think they will eventually do it.
Attendee’s:
Al Scillitani
Internet Marketing Manager
Global Value Commerce http://www.globalvaluecommerce.com
Personal Blog http://www.marketingdon.com
twitter.com/alscillitani
Jenny Halasz
Director, Operations
Acronym Media http://www.acronym.com
twitter.com/jennyhalasz
Donna Bedford
Global SEO lead
Lenovo
http://www.lenovo.com/us/en/
Dan London
Director of Online Marketing
ShareFile http://www.ShareFile.com
Personal Blog http://www.dan-london.com
twitter.com/danlondon
Rick Ferguson
Search Marketing Director
Bold Interactive http://www.boldinteractive.com
Wayne Sutton
Entrepreneur, Strategist, Producer
http://wayne-sutton.com/
twitter.com/waynesutton
Nathania Johnson
News Coorespondent
Search Engine Watch
http://searchenginewatch.com
8 Responses to “Meeting with Stefan Weitz, Director of Search at Bing”
The information was very valuable. It gave me an idea of where they are headed in search.
I asked about the search preview and where that was headed and Stefan noted that they plan on making some changes in the near future as to what is displayed.
By Dan London on Aug 21, 2009
I really like your blog and i respect your work. I’ll be a frequent visitor.
By Bunker on Aug 23, 2009
I added your blog to bookmarks. And i’ll read your articles more often!
By John on Aug 25, 2009
I use both Bing and Google search engine and i dont see much difference in their search results. I use google for searching hard to find academic topics and Bing for general search.
By Kim Lautner on Feb 18, 2010