COOPER ON SEARCH
Microsoft makes big claims for Bing launch
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Microsoft has finally unveiled the worst kept secret in the world, Bing, once again stating its ambition to be the main player in the search world.
As a search engine, Bing actually works very well. It looks good, some of the new features - like the dynamic gallery links down the left-hand side - are a nice touch, as is functionality it intends to bring in from other Microsoft properties, such as Multimap and Ciao.
In fact, some of the new stuff is great: for example, results for flight enquiries are going to integrate Microsoft’s existing Farecast offering, which predicts whether displayed prices are gong to go up or down in the next week, and therefore advises you to buy or wait until you can get a better deal.
Microsoft also stressed how Bing will positively affect search ad campaigns, with even greater targeting opportunities. The company was also keen to point out its secondary search box, which lets you search within a site from the search engine itself, delivers the results within the site you’re searching, rather than within Bing results.
“We’re not looking to take advertising revenues where it’s unnecessary,” said Paul Stoddard, Microsoft UK Search Lead, alluding to the criticism laid on Google when it did exactly that in March last year (nma 27 March 2008).
But so what? What’s this actually going to achieve? When briefing me yesterday morning Microsoft Advertising UK commercial director Chris Ward was clear that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s belief that they can be a “strong second” to Google before overtaking them is achievable.
That’s a hell of a claim, especially when you look at Hitwise stats for the UK that show Google has 86.9% of market share to Microsoft’s 3.5%.
Ward said they can gain ground by encouraging those already on the MSN network to use it more often, which seems fair enough.
But Marc Bresseel, regional sales director for EMEA at Microsoft Advertising (MDAS), told new media age the same thing ahead of Live Search’s previous relaunch back in October 2007 (nma 20 September 2007).
This, though, didn’t exactly work: according to Hitwise, Microsoft’s share in the UK has dropped from 4.39% since then, while Google’s increased from 82%.
So, we wait with bated breath for this rumoured $100m ad campaign - which, typically, won’t be unveiled in the UK until later in the year - to see how it’s going to lure in new users.
We all know the market needs a challenger to Google, but, once again, I very much doubt it’s going to be Microsoft - at least, not on its own. Your move, Yahoo.