Quora announced that its data is now included in Bing’s social sidebar tool. The sidebar aggregates content from Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to help users find answers to their queries. The new addition could help brands as Quora uses a question-and-answer format on its network that can be especially useful for marketers responding to consumer and prospects inquiries with relevant content marketing material.
Since initially rolling out the social sidebar in May, Bing has made some minor alterations, including the ability for users to tag Facebook friends when sharing search results. However, Quora’s integration is the first such expansion related to new platforms included in the sidebar.
According to Quora, the data will initially be available only to users within the U.S, and Quora account holders can opt to keep their activity on the site out of the Bing sidebar.
“As part of our ongoing commitment to work with industry partners to make the social experience compelling and useful for customers, we’ve worked with Quora to surface even more great content on Bing,” Misha Birman, senior program manager for Bing’s social team, said a blog post.
While Bing has rolled out a series of new features in 2012, it still struggles to resonate with the public. Brafton recently highlighted a pair studies from Experian and comScore that found Bing accounts for less than one-fifth of the American search market remains at less than one-fifth (not counting Yahoo queries fielded by its engine), compared with Google’s share of more than 65 percent of all queries.
