Whether it’s an old friend, a former classmate or (ahem) yourself, searching for people is one of the most common things we do on the web. Last year, we took the first step to bring expanded search results of your Facebook friends into Bing, making it easier to find friends and friends of friends more quickly.
With people search being such a high volume pastime, we're taking it a step further letting you have more control in how you show up on Bing. Beginning today, with Linked Pages, we’re letting you link websites related to you in search results. Now your friends looking for you online can find what you want them to find. You can also link pages to your friends to help them shine on Bing as well. Let’s take a closer look.
There are probably many “John Smith’s” out there, but when John Smith’s friends are looking for him, they want to find their friend John and information about him. By having more control over how you show up in Bing through linking related pages to your search results, now you can help your friends find the interesting stuff that you want them to see. With Linked Pages, here is how John Smith will appear on Bing:
Getting started
To get started, go to bing.com/linkedpages. Log-in with your Facebook ID and when you see the following screen, grant Bing permission to post to Facebook.
Start Linking!
Search for yourself. Try including your city, school, or employer – for example “John Smith Bing” – to find more results and start linking. Links can include your blog, a personal website, organizations you’re associated with, activities you’re involved with or just sites you like. And as your interests and activities change, you can easily link more. So now when your friends search for you, they’ll not only see trusted results from Bing, but also the pages and sites you’ve linked.
Link Sites for Friends
Help your friends show up better on Bing too. Just search for a friend and link pages about them.
Remove a link
You have full control over what results you’re linked in. Simply follow the link notification from Facebook or go to bing.com/linkedpages to remove links you added or links your friends added about you. Once you remove a link, you are the only person that can go back and relink yourself to that page. And as a reminder, you have to give permission to Bing to start linking pages and can turn it off at any time by disabling the application in Facebook.
As the most popular social network, Facebook has given all of us an easy way to re-connect with old friends or schoolmates. Chances are they’re using search to check us out to see what else we’ve been up to. With Linked Pages on Bing, you can decide how you look to your old roommate, your first crush, or a new friend. Check out the following video to see Linked Pages in action:
And this is just the beginning of what’s possible and another step toward looking more deeply at how search can become more personal and useful when you add people to the equation. For now, enjoy this first phase, start linking pages and let us know what you think.
- Ian Lin, Bing Social Search
*Linked Pages are currently only available in the United States