So, one of our TMPDM associates was hungry the other night while visiting a friend, so he wanted to test Bing’s local search. He typed in the phrase “Taco Bell Lawrence Kansas.” Simple enough, but the results were surprising. It returned the following: “We couldn’t find business results for taco bell near Lawrence, KS.” Needless to say, this left Jon wondering “¿dónde está Taco Bell?” So, why should you care about the eating habits of others?

There is a lot of buzz surrounding Bing right now. In part because of Microsoft’s $75 million advertising campaign, and because there is a change in how a top-tier search engine works. Many companies are wondering if more of their advertising attention needs to be (re)dedicated to Bing. The Taco Bell example is one that clearly demonstrates how Bing is still ironing out the kinks. It will undoubtedly improve the local element since the same search on “big” Bing returns plenty of Lawrence Taco Bell eating opportunities. The local search shows where they are lagging behind Google’s local search capabilities. For now Bing will continue to have significantly less search share than Google. We will continue to watch the evolution of Bing and you can feel confident in your existing marketing targets.