It now seems possible for UK businesses to submit to a third party site and thereby gain a local listing in Bing.
Bing Local Listings are similar to Google Local (or Google Maps) in that they can come up above the algorithmic (organic) search engine results when a searcher includes local place names in a search query, for example: “SEO Company Cheltenham” rather than just “SEO Company”.
Up until now I had assumed that Bing Local listing submissions could only be completed by US based companies, with the few UK based local search engine results being cobbled together from the listings on third party business directories.
All that changed after I read Matthew Elshaws’ Blog on ineedhits.com entitled “How to Setup a UK Bing Local Listing” where he talks about Daniel Dutton who has identified where Microsoft gets UK local business listings from, in his blog post entitled “Get Listed in Microsoft UK’s Bing/MSN/Live Business Directory”.
Anyway long story short if you are based in the UK and want to see if it works go to http://www.marketlocation.com/changereq/ and enter your company details.
Please note that this is rather speculative and it will probably take some time for results to be seen, so please no e-mails. I have submitted my own site and put the word out about this and will let you know the outcome.
Justin March offers this set of instructions as ‘Guidance Only’. Therefore, Justin cannot be held responsible for any work carried out by YOU and/or ANY third party using the instructions.
