On May 28, 2009 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduced the digital world to their latest incarnation of its search technology, Bing. All web users were given access to Bing on June 3, 2009. Why did Microsoft alter the search engine and what does this mean to the search engine ranking your company already has achieved? Will your keyword ranking suffer at all?
The first question is quite simple to answer. Microsoft is desperate to get some of the market share that Google now enjoys. Do the names Magellan, Open Text, Info Seek, Snap and Direct Hit sound familiar? These are all Search engines that Google has taken over in the last decade. In 2006 the value for Google and Live Search were 49.2% and 9.6% respectively. At the time of Bing’s onset the value of Google had increased to 72.4% and Live Search had fallen to just 6.3%. With the Google slice of the search engine pie so large and not slowing down, Microsoft had to make some improvements to their search engine offering.
The second question is harder to answer. At first glance, the rankings you and your SEO provider have achieved should not be affected. Some features of the new Bing are impressive and could facilitate an ease of use which could be advantageous to your website visitors. One main difference is the fact that Microsoft calls their latest endeavor a “decision engine” rather than a “search engine”. The main reason for the title change is that Bing is supposed to assist the user in making decisions by delivering the best results, presented in a more organized way to simplify key tasks and actually help you make decisions faster. There are features such as cash back on great products, and Price Predictor, which will tell the user when is the best time to buy an airline ticket in order to help get you the lowest. Bing is offering compare and contrast features so your customer will be able to compare your product, price and shipping requirements against others. It could be wonderful for your business to have such features at the tip of the user’s fingers. A primary goal of all websites is for the consumer to make a wise choice|smart decision} (the decision to buy) at a fast pace. Bing promises to do just that.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Microsoft plans on spending between $80 million and $100 million marketing Bing. These numbers represent almost a quarter of their total yearly advertising budget. This large amount of advertising can only help all of those websites ranked on Bing. High rankings should translate into higher rewards. It is like getting free advertising. Your SEO company should work very hard in the next year to increase your rank on Bing so you can take advantage of this advertising push.
Microsoft reports that your website’s rankings may jump around a bit at first. They say that the rankings will stabilize “in a short while”. Since the searches are going to be more narrowed and refined, it is believed that URL’s with hyphen separated words will have an initial bounce. But it is too early to analyze the results. We can only rely on the information that Microsoft says at this time.
Should you change your SEO optimization strategy? It is always a good idea to speak with your professional, but at this time,probably not. Remember how small Bing’s slice of the search engine pie is. A month after it’s launch, Bing’s share has grown to 8.23% of all searches. While this is not a large, the upward movement can only help those websites rank well on Bing. Microsoft’s Bing has improved greatly in a short amount of time. Last year the term that was searched the most|the most commonly searched term} on Live Search was “Google”. After its unveiling, Steve Wozniak, the Apple co-founder called Bing “astounding.” All the speculation can only improve web traffic and hopefully improve web sales.
