Should I be doing anything about Bing?

There’s been lots of fanfare about the launch of the Bing, Microsoft’s ‘new’ search engine, or, as they’ve described it, ‘decision engine’.

My advice is not to do anything, yet.

Not until Bing proves itself a clear winner in terms of user engagement would you ever consider making wholesale changes to your SEO or online marketing strategy! I don’t see that happening for quite some time.

By the way, whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha? Could Bing also be a case of ‘today’s newspaper headline; tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapper’?

Anyway, you also need to factor in that Australia’s version of Bing is nowhere near as ‘fully featured’ as the US version, where they’ve got all the goodies.

But let’s first talk about its new features.

My team and I have had a quick look around and there are some things we love and other things we don’t (in Bing’s US version). Here’s a quick overview (and by no means exhaustive):

• Bing’s developers clearly understand that different types of searches require different interfaces and answers, something that Google has ‘shot-gunned’ with universal search (or blended search).

• Bing’s Images section is fabulous; it’s simply streets ahead of Google’s image search. You can sort by image size, layout, illustration vs. picture/photograph and much more. Very similar to istockphoto’s search feature come to think of it… Hmm…

• The shopping comparison engine is also brilliant, great information, reviews, user ratings, etc.

But that said, its ‘best price’ model is just plain wrong.

A search on Bing Shopping for a Nikon D80 with a certain type of lens showed Bing’s best price from US$1,080. Using Google’s search I was able to find the exact same camera package for US$799.

That’s really going to really annoy a lot of people!

In addition, Bing offers a ‘cash-back’ system for shopping with its ‘preferred suppliers’ – which immediately makes me suspicious. The ‘best price’ results are actually coming from shopping ‘partners’. It’s almost like one big affiliate program going on in there (but the affiliate (Bing) is using its muscle to call all the shots)!

• The video section is also really nifty; you can sort videos by length, resolution, source and screen size. Love this bit.

• Bing’s travel engine is also very clever, we love the price predictor which tells you whether you should wait to buy a ticket or purchase it immediately. This is courtesy of FareCast.com – a company Microsoft purchased a little while back. But again, like the ‘shopping comparison’ engine, how accurate is it really? Are they really the cheapest flights?

• And when are we going to see all these features in Australia? If you want to see the fully featured US version, you’ll need to click the country selector at the top right of Bing Australia’s home page.

Look, I guess if you’re a big Australian airline, shopping site or similar, then get on the phone to the Bing team (if they haven’t called you already) and do a deal to get your feed into Bing.com.au – if you can get a good deal. The commercial relationships seem a bit murky and not exactly impartial and transparent for ‘us users’.

Anyway, you can learn more about how to get your product feed into Bing here.

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Chris Thomas heads Reseo, a search engine optimisation company which specialises in creating and maintaining Google AdWords campaigns and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns for a range of corporate clients.

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