On May 28, 2009 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduced the world to their new incarnation of its search technology, Bing. All web users had access to Bing on June 3, 2009. Why did Microsoft alter the search engine and how does that effect the search engine ranking your business already has achieved? Will your keyword ranking lose ranking?
The first question is quite easy to answer. Microsoft is desperate to grasp some of the market share that Google now has. Do the names Magellan, Open Text, Info Seek, Snap and Direct Hit ring a bell? These are all Search engines that Google has gobbled up in the last decade. In 2006 the market share for Google and Live Search were 49.2% and 9.6% respectively. At the time of Bing’s launch the market share of Google had grown 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 not so easily answered. When first looking at it, the rankings you and your SEO provider have worked so hard to get should not be affected. Some features of the new Bing are innovative and could garner an ease of use which could be beneficial to your website visitors. One major difference is the fact that Microsoft calls their latest offering a decision engine not a search engine. The primary 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 quicker. There are specific features such as cash back on great products, and Price Predictor, which will tell the user when to buy an airline ticket in order to help get you the best price. 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 users 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 says it will do just that.
Something else to keep in mind is that Microsoft plans on spending between $80 million and $100 million promoting Bing. These figures represent almost one 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 sales. It is almost like getting free advertising. Your SEO company should make extra effort in the next year to increase your standings on Bing so you can enjoy the effects of this advertising push.
Microsoft reports that your websites rankings may jump around a bit at first. They say that the rankings will become stable in a short while. Since the searches are going to be more refined and narrowed, it is believed that URLs with hyphen separated words will have an initial advantage. But it is too early to analyze the results. We can only go by what Microsoft is telling us at this time.
Should you change your SEO optimization strategy? It is always a good idea to speak with your professional, but right now,probably not. Remember how small Bing’s percentage of the total search engine really is. A month into its launch, Bings share has grown to 8.23% of all searches. While this is not a great number, the upward trend 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 it had been unveiled, Steve Wozniak, the Apple co-founder called Bing astounding. All the buzz can only increase web traffic and hopefully improve web sales.
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