Microsoft Bing

The revamped search engine from Microsoft is making big efforts to win market share in its competition with google and yahoo in the search engine space. However with a 65 % market share for google, it would be very difficult for Bing to make it big real soon and being only slightly better than yahoo or google would not help. More meaningful and advanced features need to be present in Bing so as to make users stop using google.

With the huge ad campaign in the range of 80 million dollars to 100 million dollars the campaign is certainly intended to be successful and with the early indications things are looking positive. Initial trials are favorable; however it is too early to call Bing a success.

With all major search engines trying to move their search engines into local search, it represents a relatively untapped revenue source. In terms of share in local searches, yahoo and Microsoft had declining shares as compared to google whose share has increased. Microsoft would have to make major strides to make it big in this sphere.

The results page retrieved from Bing look similar to google but some unique features separate it from the rest of the pack. As often referred to as decision engine the layout in profile page on Bing is more navigable in terms of generating purchase decision about a particular business. It also provides more content with each feature like:

Business listing: almost similar to what is there on yahoo and google, it provides information like address, hours of operation, contact number, reviews and web site links for business information and other features.

Map: Bing provides a very convenient feature which gives predetermined or one click directions from the different parts of the city. It can be very convenient for the users who are familiar with the area under search.

Nearby: a very useful feature which lets you know about other services and places of interest in the nearby area. This simple yet added convenience goes a long way in helping people plan an outing.

User Review Scorecard: it provides a kind of summary of the user reviews and categorizes them for quick references. Clicking on show reviews next to categories will provide more insights related to them.

The content provided by Bing through integration of local results is very vital to searchers and help them make informed purchase decisions along with purchase criteria, beyond map and link to web site for merchant.

As per reports from yellow pages Bing has been in top 10 during last 2 weeks. Bing is on the right track as it relates to local search and with results being quite comprehensive it is creating positive vibes. However the results are not good enough to call it a google killer yet.