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(Article first published in July '09. It has been modified slightly to suit its publication on our site)
In this article we take a brief look at Microsoft's latest foray into the highly lucrative world of search engines and review what impact, if any, it will have on small to medium businesses from a web strategy and promotion perspective.
A Little History About Search Engines
In 1996 a couple of students from Stanford University started developing a new type of search engine. One that used a new concept in defining how websites should be ranked. They called it 'Google' and it launched in 1998. In computing terms it was a 'perfect storm' implementation as its technology was brilliant and delivered 'real' results rather than a list of sponsored or paid-for listings. Most importantly however, it was fast because it was unencumbered by flashy or heavy graphics.
Roll forward just over 10 years and Google is worth (as of 23/07/09) 135 Billion Dollars! That's on a par with Apple and galloping on the heels of big names like Microsoft and IBM. It's no wonder then that Microsoft (the company that likes to put its fingers in as many pies as possible) has taken a keen interest in the search engine market. Their previous attempt was not so impressive. Microsoft Live! Search was slow and bulky and its results were never quite as relevant as Google's, so Microsoft set about coming up with a new concept in search engines and the result, launched in May 2009, was 'Bing'.
What Is Bing?
Microsoft is at great lengths to state that Bing is not a search engine per se. They have coined the phrase 'Decision Engine', which has major implications from a small to medium business perspective. Basically, Bing looks at the world wide web in a different way to other search engines. Although we don't know exactly what algorithms and formulas Bing uses (no search engine companies ever release this information), we know that they look at the world differently because the results are so different to other search engine's results. The bottom line is that the results you get from Bing are supposed to be more relevant with links to 'real' companies rather than 'spammy' type sites. An example of this would be that on a Google search for a popular musician, you might see a number of other third-party websites ahead of the musician's own website. Bing however, would make a decision that you are probably more interested in seeing the musician's own site rather than a bunch of fan sites.
How Does This Affect Business Owners?
If you have a strong search engine marketing strategy, then your world just became a little more complicated. Bing's results are not the same as Google's and so clearly they both have different requirements when it comes to optimising a website. However, it is still very early days and the 'best practices' for optimising sites for Bing are not well defined yet. Then there is pay-per-click advertising with AdCenter, Microsoft's search engine advertising program linked to Bing. If you are running an Adwords account, do you switch some or all of your spend to AdCenter? The answer for now is no, just wait and see. The key factor is how much market share Bing will take. Microsoft is spending a reported $80M on promoting Bing in the US and some other larger territories, so we'll have to watch this space.
If it does succeed in taking significant share then businesses will have to look at optimising their sites for 2 search engine requirements and they will have to look at splitting their budgets between the two PPC advertising services.
Franco De Bonis has worked in the field of sales and marketing promotion since 1990 and was most recently the global marketing manager for a major international technology company before setting up DG Group in January 2007.
DG Group is dedicated to delivering all the marketing solutions any company may require. Whether it's a website or leaflets and brochures, or even some product packaging; DG Group will manage the whole project and even provide guidance along the way.
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