Bing has launched a new feature that seems to be something between a business directory and a content aggregator. Dubbed „Editors‘ picks,“ it’s a search feature that aims to help consumers find relevant sites hand picked by Bing editors.
The results recommended by editors are categorized according to industry – featuring everything from education and event planning to shopping and hobbies. While many of the listings are eccommerce businesses, a number of the top sites have a combination of related products and effective content marketing.
For instance, one of the top sites in the „party planning“ category is Celebrations.com. Its homepage prominently features a CTA asking visitors to „hire a party professional,“ as well as a number of recent headlines from its party-planning blog. When visitors click a headline, such as the site’s „Pumpkin Parfait“ post categorized under „Thanksgiving and Christmas Recipe Ideas,“ they are brought to an article offering tips on how to create this confection for their own parties. The page also features related Thanksgiving decorations that readers might be interested in purchasing.
Many featured sites have blogs, and other Editors‘ picks listings have in-depth product landing pages that offer a unique brand perspective. Marketers hoping to gain extra visibility for their sites should note that Bing’s editor-selected pages reward top-notch content, mirroring Bing’s previous statement that content is still king for SEO.
Editors‘ picks‘ element of human curation suggests the company is working to provide even higher-quality results to users, and this may be needed to keep it on par with Google or Blekko. As Brafton reported on Friday, Bing appears to be the only engine that Blekko editors marked as having lower-quality content on page one results in its 3-Engine Monty (which compares SERPs across engines). Perhaps this is why Google still dominates the search market, fielding nearly two-thirds of queries.
