For any of you business owners that have joined Bing Business Portal, there seem to have been new changes. One change is the name itself, no longer will it be known as Bing Business Portal, but now as Bing Places for Business.
I believe that this may be to clear up any confusion as to what the tool actually does. As you see Bing Business Portal, you wouldn’t instantly know as to what its exact use is. However, Bing Places for Business seems to be a much more concise name and clears up some of the confusion surrounding it.
On top of the simple name change, there is a new feature to look for as well as the existing ones.
As usual you are able to verify and claim your business listing. This is to clear up any people simply using your business name for their own amusement, even though I can’t quite see what amusement would be brought about from it, but it is a good safety precaution to have to verify if the company is yours.
Also, there will still be the ability to add images, hours of operation, parking options, and preferred payment methods. This is a very helpful tool for the average user looking for a business to go to. It saves the user and the company’s time by reducing phone calls inquiring of these various options and provides users with a chance to see images of possible happenings or just what the company building looks like in case there is trouble finding the place.
Seeing as these previous features are nothing new, let’s get to the new one. Now, companies can add links to videos. For every company, this may not necessarily be a great bonus, because not every company is going to have a need to provide videos or even be able to provide useful videos, but to the companies that can benefit from it, it is a cool bonus, because people love to visually see what it is your marketing.
With the addition of this new feature, companies will also see a change in the old features.
As of this current moment, companies will no longer be able to post daily deals or coupons. With this, any daily deals or coupons that existed before will now be removed.
Lastly, there comes a change to the options available. Such options as collateral, QR codes, and a free mobile website have also been discontinued. Users may see these in the future, but as of now, it won’t be an option.
Bing is further opening up the door with these great services and we should expect to see more in the near future. With new search options popping up every day, like the new Graph Search by Facebook, Bing must make sure to keep going and make sure that anything they do now is done even better.