Bing was launched at the end of May 2009. Bing has invested a ton in marketing their hot new engine with all its shiny new features. Some have said that this could even be the search engine release that Microsoft needed to make a dent in Google’s search engine market share.

Now that Bing has been in the mix for a few months, I will say that it has gotten a lot of buzz in the search world. There have been mixed reviews, some positive and some negative. Users are speaking highly of the Quick Preview feature that allows you to preview any site. I personally like that the Related Searches and Search History is displayed in the left-hand navigation. Users are saying how fast the results come up, and it has even been said that Google is making adjustments to compete with its speedy search results. Just today, I read an article that discussed Google’s new AJAX search, designed to speed up the engine.

I had fun with a blind test tool, which generates search results from all 3 search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing, and allows you to vote for your favorite result. In this blind test, I chose Google 7 out of 8 times. (The other time I chose Yahoo).

From a paid search campaign performance perspective, it is simply too early to tell how the new Bing engine compares to the old MSN engine. We looked at click-through rate and conversion rate data for our largest retail accounts and compared results pre-Bing to post-Bing and the data is simply inconclusive at this point. Regardless of whether Bing produces better click-through rate and conversion rates, however, the biggest challenge it has, of course, is to secure a larger piece of the search market share. That all remains to be seen, although so far market share is virtually unchanged (at about 3.1%) when you review it globally, http://marketshare.hitslink.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4&qpmr=100&qpdt=1&qpct=3&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=125&qpnp=3

I must admit that I am fairly skeptical that Bing’s new effort is going to make much of a difference to me or my clients running paid search campaigns. To me, it is simply a rebranding of an old search engine, albeit it one with some better features. And from my perspective, it is still simply a place we must advertise if we are to capture the 3% of the market that searches there. For some of our clients, 3% can translate into 100’s of 1000’s of dollars in sales each year.

We will keep an eye on natural results, as this may be where the real differences and Bing advantages lie…….

Tags: Paid Search //