So I haven’t really had a chance to do the local search comparison with Bing that I did in general at SEL (although I threw in some local stuff there). But Bing is now live for all to use so why don’t you guys use it and see what you think on the the local front and otherwise.
The functionality is nice. However the quality of the local experience on Bing is to some degree going to be at the mercy of the underlying data.
Geotargeted search ads come from adCenter; however ads on local pages come from Yellowpages.com (which took over for Idearc/Superpages). While there is conventional “shading” on ads appearing on general search results (see below), notice the absence of shading on the sponsored listings once you click over to “local” on the left nav. The following screens are from a query for “dentist” without a geo-modifier:
Notice also the graphical tiles for the sponsored links:
What do you think of Bing and these choices for local?
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Related: Vanity search on Bing (xRank):
Also . . . Bing doing a little too well (no images) as sex/porn search engine this a.m.
Screenwerk 
June 1, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Ran my usual tests including vanity search. Big FAIL in my book. Top result for my name is my GetSatisfaction page. Wikipedia appears less elevated than in Goog.
Also worth noting that on mobile, branding still says Live, but returning same results as Bing.
Not awful, but see no reason to switch.
June 1, 2009 at 6:26 pm
They told me this a.m. that it’s now Bing on mobile. Haven’t yet had a chance to check.
September 6, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Great blog, reading it through RSS feed as well
September 6, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Sorry for the double post, just wanted to let you know that i think something is wrong with the RSS feed of your blog and you might want to check it out, thanks
October 13, 2009 at 8:05 pm
I love Bing. At last Microsoft released something I can use.