Where To Claim Your Free Local Business Search Listing:Bing

Bing is one of the three major search engines where you should make the time to claim your free local business listing.

Bing is working hard to differentiate their local business listing business from the others, so it’s well worth your time and energy to claim or add your business listing to Bing by clicking here.

The Bing Business Portal allows you to

• Claim, create, verify, and manage local business listings
• Identify key search categories where you want your listing to appear
• Customize listings with enhanced details such as logos, photos, and more
• Create a mobile Web site (and free QR Code) so customers can learn about your business on their mobile devices
• Create a custom menu (restaurants and bars) for inclusion on a mobile menu
• Create Deals (coupons) and promote them for free on Bing (both PC and Mobile) and Facebook
• Authorize other users to manage your listings

When you go to claim your Bing Local Business Listing – you may find that it already contains photos, descriptions and other additions which you did not make.  Don’t be alarmed, Bing has simply taken information found elsewhere online and used it to update your listing for you.

Who needs Groupon when you can create your own “deals” with Bing.  The Bing Business Portal includes a deal editor, similar to a wizard, so you can easily create and manage deals straight from the management page for your business listing.  Best of all Bing does not charge any fees or revenue share for the creation or promotion of deals.

Even better, if your deal meets the following criteria, it will be highlighted on the Deals section of the Bing mobile site http://m.bing.com.   Criteria for inclusion in Daily Deals are:

• Deals need to be at least 50% off of the retail value of the goods/services offered
• The minimum dollar amount of the retail value of the goods/services should be $20 or more
• Only three active deals per merchant location can be provided at a given time
• Deals offered should have an expiration of three days or less from the day they appear on the daily deals page
• Repeat deals cannot be offered until 15 days after the deal has expired.
• Deals need to be created by 6PM Pacific time in order to make it to the daily deals page for the next day

So why use Living Social, Groupon or any other daily deal site that will take 50% or more of the proceeds?  Team up with Bing and let them promote your deals as part of your local search listing.