Bing has announced they have tightly integrated the Facebook Likes data they began using back in October into the Bing search results.

I believe this move is to counter-act Google’s announcement of their tighter integration of social search elements into the search results.

With Google, these social integrations can influence the ranking of the results – it does not appear to be the same with Bing’s Facebook integration. It seems that if a Bing search result does have any Facebook like data, then Bing will label it under the search result. Bing will not boost a search results in the rankings based on that data – at least not yet. Also, Bing has Facebook likes, whereas Google does not.

Here is a before and after screen shot of Bing displaying such results with Facebook likes:

Before – Bing Without Facebook Likes:

After – Bing With Facebook Likes:

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.