Bing is an untapped venue for ecommerce videos

Bing, the search engine created by Microsoft, is gaining traffic, although it's no Google yet. However, not many e-commerce companies are placing their product videos on this newer search engine.

Now that Bing is powering searches on Facebook's Graph Search, it's a good time to get your videos indexed in Bing. Here's how to do it.

Bing is no longer a newcomer to the search world, it came onto the scene in 2009. However, when it comes to ecommerce videos, not very many are indexed in Bing's search database, especially when compared to Google.

Zappos, an ecommerce leader that has taken many steps to maximize its brand value with videos, has 565,000 videos indexed in Google. At the time of this writing, the retailer had just a fraction of that amount in Bing. 

Earlier in 2013 Zappos had a mere 20 videos indexed by Bing, so it is obviously giving the search engine more attention.

Why the dearth of product videos on Bing?

There's no big conspiracy at hand – the simplest explanation is that the people who manage SEO programs devote the lion's share of their time to Google. It's the 900-lb. gorilla that everyone cares about.

Their attention to Google makes sense, considering that the search engine seemingly changes its algorithms as often as the weather changes – and every time it makes these changes, it throws the SEO experts for a loop.

Even though Google remains the driving force in web search, ecommerce businesses need to keep Bing on their watch lists, especially for product videos. For one thing, Bing and Facebook have joined forces, announcing that Bing will power Facebook's new Graph Search tool.

This means that indexing your product videos on Bing can also generate traffic to your site from Facebook. Bing is also providing search on Yahoo!. The outcome of these partnerships is that Bing currently has about a 28% share of the web search market.

Of course, it's clear that Bing does not get its time in the media spotlight the way that Google does. Microsoft is trying to show that Bing search is just as user-friendly as Google – which is why the company established the "Bing It On" search challenge website (www.bingiton.com) in late 2012.

At "Bing It On," users can enter search terms and decide if they prefer results from Bing or Google. Microsoft says that "Bing It On" users prefer Bing results to Google results by a 2 to 1 margin.

To ensure that your product videos get a place on Bing, there are some things you should know about the indexing process. Initially, getting your videos indexed by Bing was not as obvious as indexing them on Google. In Bing's Webmaster Tools pages, there is a field for submitting your video site map – but it turns out it doesn't work.

Instead of tearing your hair out while you try to send your video site map via the link above, there's an easier way to get the job done: Email Bing your site map to .

Also making the task easier is that Bing now accepts the Google protocol site map, so there's no need to create a brand-new site map – simply submit the video site map you've already created for Google.

We can expect that Bing's user base will continue to increase; especially now that Facebook's Graph Search tool is in use. Gain a competitive advantage by indexing your product videos on Bing as this newest major search engine gets more traffic.