BING - the Decision Engine from Microsoft
 Microsoft has re-invented its search engine several times in their quest to gain market share in the search engine landscape. On May 28th, they unveiled their latest attempt with the launch of BING. Microsoft positions BING as a decision engine versus a search engine and is willing to fund a marketing budget in excess of $100 million to help convince us of that.
Is it better than Google? (Likely a question asked at Microsoft’s R & D campus many times in recent months.) Well Google is pretty strong, both from a “relevancy of results” perspective and share of the search market they own. After all, as any marketer will tell you, the crème de la crème in marketing is when your brand becomes a verb (a.k.a Xerox, Fedex and Google).
But here’s my quick perspective of BING including my first impression as a search tool and the impact it may have on your web marketing strategy.
First impressions count
BING makes a good first impression on their home page with a series of different images that catch the eye and some cool interactions if you have Microsoft’s Silverlight installed. Google takes the “Keep It Simple Stupid” method which has clearly worked well for them in the past.
Random Sample Searches
A search on a national term like “Nissan” list sites that are either the same or very similar to results delivered in Google. However, BING gets extra points for layout and organization with the related categories nicely isolated to the left. Google provides related results but they are tucked in with the result listings and often overlooked.
Organizing the related searches to the left provides a better layout, no doubt. Aside from the great layout, Bing is using this real estate to provide results based on what it thinks you wanted to find. From several of the searches I’ve done, it’s been pretty dead on accurate.
BING
Vs. Google
Local Search Sampling
In searching for “Greensboro Dentists” our returns were similar results for both BING and Google. Both engines included local map features and again we found the related searches, this time with a local flavor.
Hover Over Description & Search History
BING offers a nice summary description feature when you hover over the right side of the listing. This gives you a quick reference to help decide if you want to take a visit to the listed site. The summary description feature isn’t available for the PPC sponsored ads …. Not surprising …. better for Microsoft if you click thru to see the site.
BING also provides a nice Search History in the left column for easy reference to what you’ve searched on recently.
What does this all mean for Search marketing efforts?
We’ll be keeping a close eye on BING over the coming months. From our perspective the real questions with the roll out of Bing are:
- How much market share will it gain?
- Who will it take that market share from?
- How will this impact SEO (search engine optimization) efforts?
For some great insight on BING from our Web marketing team, be sure to checkout Jeremy Shaffer’s article on the BĒM Interactive Blog.
Malinda Pengelly
President
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