Control Your Bing Business Portal Photos with “Key Area” Feature

Filed in Bing, Featured, Local Search by Matt McGee on July 20, 2011 5 Comments

If you’re in Google Maps and you do a search that will bring up my wife‘s Google Places listing, you’ll see something that’s been frustrating me for a while now: Google clipped the main photo of her so much that it looks likes she’s imitating a prairie dog! It’s terrible:

carimcgee-google

There’s nothing in the Google Places business center that lets me fix that, short of deleting the photo entirely and uploading a new one.

No such limitations over in the Bing Business Portal. As I mentioned back in April when it launched, the BBP has a few helpful features that Google doesn’t.

One of those is a very common photo editing tool that you’ve probably seen on many social networking sites: a tool that lets you choose which part of the image to show. (On social networking sites, you often use the tool to control your avatar.)

Bing calls it the Key Area tool, and it lets me guarantee that Cari’s photo will never look like Google’s prairie dog imitation.

keyarea-bing

It’s not just about controlling exactly what part of the image shows up in your local listing, either. Bing’s tool will make sure that whatever part of the photo you set as the “key area” will always show no matter if the display space is horizontal or vertical, or whatever the size requirements are.

I don’t know if this Key Area feature is a new addition from the recent maintenance or if it was there all along, but it’s another nice tool that’s missing from Bing’s competition. Until Google adds something similar, I guess I’ll resign myself to only using images that fit Google’s rigid system.

Comments (5)

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  1. Cari McGee says:

    Well, there are those that would argue that Google scans faces and only highlights the best portion…my forehead has always been one of my best features. 😉

  2. Matt McGee says:

    LOL! Yes, some would argue that … but it’s still not how they should do it. 🙂

  3. MiriamEllis says:

    What is it with the McGees? First Matt shows only half of his face for years, and then Cari shows only her forehead. 🙂

    Seriously, this is a cool feature, Matt. Google, are you listening?

  4. Dan says:

    Well, Bing has the benefit of being second. They can correct all the things that are wrong with Google Places. Now, Google needs to step it up and fix those things that are wrong with Bing.

    And I think her photo looks more like Wilson from Home Improvement than a prairie dog.

    • Matt McGee says:

      Wilson! That’s an awesome reference, Dan. Well played. And good point, Miriam — her photo actually complements my avatar quite well. 🙂

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