Microsoft came to compete
Google maps have reigned for years now, but Microsoft’s Bing is competing in a meaningful way. Today, Bing announced a series of projects they’re working on for their spring release, noting that their “focus remains consistent – we want Bing to be the best place to help you make better decisions.”
This year so far, Bing has impressed us with their implementation of augmented reality into their maps and they are serious about competing with Google.
The changes coming:
- The first news item that excites us is that the “decision engine” will be adding reviews by the Foursquare community to their maps to help people make choices about locations in their own town and in cities they visit by visualizing data for consumers.
- Bing will be testing real time search this week which is huge, “for example, when you search for a publication such as the New York Times, Bing not only gives you quick access to specific sections of the destination website, but also provides the most popular shared links from that publication.”
- Another innovation is Bing’s alteration of search after realizing that 42% of their search sessions resulted in refining results. They will be testing out some new design concepts and “moving Quick Tabs functionality to the top of the page for 1-click access to our most robust, visual, and organized pages. We think this approach is a better way for Bing to anticipate user intent and adapt both the page and the results to help make faster, more informed decisions.”
What this means
Google has spent years focused on their algorithms and not much on their UI (user interface), but Bing shot out of the gates with a mentality that UI rules (since they already seemed confident about their iterative search functionality). Bing has a devoted page to recipes and just announced a devoted page to car sales and we suspect real estate is high on their priority list.
You’ll be hearing more about SEO to please Bing over the coming months as traffic levels show they are enjoying great traffic and likely will siphon off of Google as the Google interface remains stagnant and Bing focuses on the end user as more than just a list reader but as a “decision maker.”
AgentGenius is not affiliated with Bing or Foursquare
rob | atlanta homes
March 27, 2010 at 8:14 am
Lani:
Good post. For the longest time, I ignored Bing until I noticed I was getting a lot of traffic from there. So I checked my rankings for a lot of my KWs on Bing and discovered I was page ONE for most of them. (vs page 486 on Google).
So it’s become my favorite underdog now and I’m rooting for Bing.
🙂
Lani Rosales
March 27, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Rob, that’s really great news- I suspect their algorithm is quite different (since the emphasis is on making a purchase decision), so I think in a year, many people will share your sentiment. Thanks for sharing!!