Personalized search suggestions now available from historical search clues.

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Improved imagery for Haiti and Vancouver included.

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Instant Answers and Visual Search galleries are given the winter games treatment.

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Bing is helping you stay out of the doghouse on February 14.

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Team Manning and Team Brees, eat your hearts out. It’s Team Romo that won the search bowl – at least on Bing.

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Microsoft has reported its Q2 2009 earnings (Q4 for many other companies) and the news is mixed for their online services division. Revenues improved over the previous quarter, but came in at a 5% loss year-over-year.

Specifically, online revenues for Q2 came in at $581 million, compared to $609 million the year prior. Q2 losses came in at $466 million compared with $320 million in Q2 2008.

The loss was blamed on a decrease in overall online advertising revenues. However, the silver lining was that Bing brought a growth in search revenues for Microsoft.

If Bing continues to grow, then Microsoft will do well to capitalize on its strengths to build a stronger online services division. Of course, the deal with Yahoo! should help as well.

Bing is making it easier for you to keep up with your portfolio and the U.S. stock market. Their new stocks and funds pages offer in-depth data on most U.S. stocks. The pages include an Instant Answer snapshot of what’s going on for a stock at the time you search.

Let’s see how Apple’s stock is doing a day after the iPad was unveiled. Type in the stock code AAPL and you’ll get the Instant Answer in the main search results:

Click on the main link and you get access to the new stocks and funds page for Apple on Bing. (Click on the image for a larger view.)

Image by SESConferenceSeries via Flickr

As SES Chicago 2009, I asked Matt Van Wagner of Lobster.com to share some of his tastiest search engine marketing tips. (Pun intended.)

I should disclose that I was born in California and raised in Michigan. So, when I moved to Massachusetts, I had to learn how to pronounce “lobster” correctly. It’s “lobstah.” If you don’t pronounce it correctly, then the native New Englanders will know you’re a “blow in.”

Van Wagner, who is also the president and founder of Find Me Faster, is based in New Hampshire. But he gets around. He’s been seen helping small and medium-sized companies as far away as Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont.

Van Wagner shared a couple of SEM tips, including a new one I hadn’t heard before about Bing.

So, put on your lobster bib and enjoy.

Search engine marketing tips with Matt Van Wagner, Find Me Faster and Lobster.com

Disclaimer: No lobsters were harmed in the making of this video. But, when I’m on the Cape this summer, I plan to remedy the situation.

Since 2005, Microsoft has partnered with Localeze to provide local business information in search results. Now, that relationship is being expanded with the renewal of the pair’s partnership. Localeze will provide Bing Local and Bing 411 with its Enhanced Business Registry which includes more than 14 million listings.

“Helping consumers make better buying decisions locally, our renewed relationship with Bing brings two leading search companies together to offer the best of the best in premium business listings,” said Jeff Beard, president, Localeze.

Localeze already provides with basic contact info for local businesses such as name, address and phone number. Now, Localeze will also provide additional data including operating hours, products/services offered, and whether/which credit cards are accepted. Results pulling from the data in Bing will now be attributed to Localeze, as well.

“Localeze’s rich, business-verified and enhanced local content will help Bing’s business profiles deliver more relevant and accurate results, which online shoppers need to make local purchasing decisions,” concluded Beard.