Microsoft's Bing -- An Overview
Developed from LiveSearch, Bing debuted with a vivid branding campaign, distinguishing itself as a "decision engine." Bing dazzled potential users with this play on words to emphasize an innovative approach to obtaining information online. However, does Bing deliver on its promise?Bing Features
When it comes to visual appeal, Micorsoft's Bing presents a fresh new face, with vibrant images that users can scroll over in particular spots to read information related to the photos. The search engine is entirely user-friendly, with a web search results page that includes a left hand navigation panel cataloguing search history and related search terms. In comparison with Google, which lists results in order of relevance to the search term, Bing provides associated suggestions that can assist users in effectively pinpointing the information they need.Bing includes a synopsis feature that provides informative summaries for search results, which can benefit search engine marketing campaigns by retaining user attention.
In addition, Bing offers a sampling of images and video clips within the web search results page. Users can scroll over the video thumbnails for instant play. Microsoft has also just released a beta version of a new feature called "Visual Search." With Visual Search, search results can be converted from text to images.
Microsoft's Influence on the Search Market -- Will We Ever Bing?
Since launching, Bing has enjoyed an increase in search traffic and paid search share. While the new search engine enhances the user experience with a number of features you won't find with Google, the real challenge will be adjusting the state of mind for web searchers.Google's hold on the search market is so deeply rooted that it's even entered our lexicon. Nowadays, you "Google" something, rather than "conduct a search engine query." Competing with that level of authority is unlikely to happen overnight.
While Google still governs the search engines, holding 64.6 percent of the U.S. search market, June, July and August resulted in notable gains for Bing. In fact, Google saw a small drop in search requests during June and July, totaling approximately four percent. While the figures indicate some promise, at this point, no one is absolutely sure of Bing's long term influence in the search market.
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