Social and search have taken another step toward each other: Bing is rolling out a new feature for users called Linked Pages.

Calling it a way to let users have more control in how they show up on Bing, Linked Pages lets the user link websites related to him or her in search results.

"Now your friends looking for you online can find what you want them to find. You can also link pages to your friends to help them shine on Bing as well," Bing said.

Links can include a blog, a personal website, organizations the user is associated with, activities he or she is involved with or just sites he likes. The new feature uses Bing’s relationship with Facebook, letting users sign in with their Facebook ID to create the links.

Competing with Google+

Bing, though, will have to develop other features if it wants to catch up with Google’s efforts in marrying social and search—namely via its Google+ network.

The popularity of Google+ is showing dramatic growth recently, according to February 2012 analysis from Compete, which tracked the the landing page for the main feature of the social network, the +1 button (google.com/+1/button, or plusone.google.com), beginning in November 2011. The page drew over 40 million unique visitors in December alone, with more than 10 times that amount in visits, while also passing 3 billion page views.