How To Add Your UK Business To Bing Places [Video]

Put up the bunting and hold a street party – Bing Places for Business is now available in the UK!

Gone is the messing around with my118.

Gone is the hard upsell when they phone to “confirm” your business details.

And hopefully gone are the endless calls to update business listing details that never get updated anyway…

Bing Places For Business

Bing local business listings now available in the UK

Earlier in October, Bing announced on their blog that Bing Places is now available in the UK and Canada.

You do need a Microsoft login to claim and update your business details on the Bing Map – nothing being simple, Bing Places did not want to recognise my MS login nor allow me to create a new account! It has decided to work now (hurrah) and I took the opportunity to talk you through how to claim your Bing UK business listing on video.

[showhide type=”transcript” more_text=”Click to Show Full Video Transcript” less_text=”Hide Video Transcript” hidden=”yes”]Hi it’s Jan Kearney at My Local Business Online and I want to quickly talk to you about Bing Places for Business because finally, finally it’s available here in the UK directly through Bing. In the past we’ve had to go through my118 to get a listing on Bing. That has been an absolute nightmare. For me personally they have never, ever got the information right despite phone calls, despite resubmitting and then you’re subjected to a gazillion phone calls or emails a day from cold callers.

Now it’s available I am going to claim my Bing Places as me and hopefully correct the incorrect information. Let’s get started. First of all you need to do a search for your business on the map and see if you are already there. If you submitted to my118 to get listed on Bing then you should be here. Let me just type this in. It asks for a location, the postcode should be enough. Click Search.

There I am and it still has the M Y. I’ve lost track over the last 2 years I have asked for that to be changed. It never has. I’m going to select that listing and log into a Microsoft account. Now when this first came out it didn’t recognise my Microsoft account, now it does again hopefully!

If you don’t have a Microsoft account you can sign up. You do need a Microsoft account to add your Bing Places. What I do recommend that you do is use an email address connected to your business. That way if there are any problems down the line they can use that to know that it is you working at your business to make changes.
Let’s sign in. This is like many other business listings. You can edit all sorts of wonderful stuff on here. I’m going to finally change that business name. I am not going to display my address in the results. Check that my phone number is correct, check my website. There’s Facebook, I believe we can add Twitter on here as well. So, I’ll put my Twitter on there. Shame it doesn’t have Google Plus really isn’t it? I think that’s competition so…
Now, categories… Why it has me as telephone consultants and management consultants, I don’t know! They’re not ones I have chosen. So have a look in here. Internet Marketing Service, that’s what I do. Browse the full category list.

Add your categories that actually reflect what you do. As you can see mine were incorrect. You can also add your hours of operation. 9AM, that’s a laugh! I do 10 till 6, apply to all then closed Saturday and Sunday.
The description here is obviously horrendous. So I need to put in a description there as well. Let me go and find one. Let’s see if that goes through. Company tag line, do I have one/ I’ll put that in later.
Brands carried, Images and Videos. You can add all sorts of things to your listing. Let’s put my company logo up there. Make the listing stand out a little bit. There we go. You can add 10 photos and videos. I need to do a new video so I’ll do those later.

Fill in as much information as possible. When you are happy, click submit. By clicking submit, you accept the terms and conditions as usual. So make sure you add as much information as possible. Don’t spam it to death as that tends to get flagged and the listing taken off again.

So I’ve now claimed my Bing Places listing, like on Google I need to verify it. It will send a PIN to the registered address. It will resend a Pin if you change your name, change the address, change the phone number. You can’t actually change the address and phone number at the same time. If you have a lot of wrong information change it step by step. Then click verify now and wait. Once the PIN arrives, add the Pin and you’ll be all up and running.

What you may also find is because Bing takes info from 118 and a couple of other places, you may find that you have old addresses on here as well, duplicate business listings. To get rid of them, I think the easiest way to do it is claim the business, verify it then mark it as closed or delete it. I’ll leave it at that, nice and simple, that’s what we like. And finally available for the UK – Bing Places for Business. I’ll speak to you soon.[/showhide]

Bing may not dominate local search like Google, but it is well worth claiming your business listing.  Claim your Bing Places for Business Listing at bingplaces.com

Over to you…

Will you be adding your business details to Bing Places?