With more businesses have their own online presence, Bing wants to step forward by giving their holiday opening hours.
Prior to the holiday season, many businesses change their operating hours. Like for example, stores and some restaurants may shorten their service hours. Some national retailers may even open seasonal events just for the sake of getting more sales.
The changes and fluctuating operation hours can be difficult for some to plan dining and shopping routines.
This is where Bing highlights some changes to find holiday hours for local business listings.
To make this happen, Bing local is collaborating with business owners and partners to get accurate business hours in real time. So when users search for local businesses, they'll receive an up-to-date changes for the place they want to visit.
"You will see upcoming holiday hours and closures highlighted a week before the big event, making it easy to schedule your plans," said Bing in its blog post on November 23rd, 2016.
Most businesses have straightforward hours of operation while other don't. But when they have an internet presence, they have a better chance for being seen. This is especially true for businesses with physical location.
To bring that potential, Bing has a local listing for businesses called Bing Places for Business. Not only this can raise visibility, it also allows business owners to manage and enhance how their business will appear publicly by uploading photos and other details.
To have a business listed on Bing, a Microsoft account is required. After registering or logging in, business owners need to follow the steps and choose the category of their business from the list. For advertising agencies that work on behalf a business, they must first create an agency account by filling the Bing Places Agency Details Form. The next procedures will be the same for both.
After getting verified, the business can then manage their listing to control their image and reputation on the web.
Bing is Microsoft's search engine. While it's certainly not as popular as Google, it's still a favorite tool for many millions of people. With Microsoft pushing Windows 10 to more users, Bing has been made the default search engines for them, as well as to all newer computers, tablets and mobile devices running Windows' operating system.