I suspect Microsoft has long felt the burr under their saddle when talking about Google. Looks like their competitive nature has them back in the headlines. They are unveiling the newest updates to their Search Engine technology called Bing. The biggest question is, can it be a competitor to Google?
We do recognize that Search is improving and changing. Bing as being billed as a Decision Engine and you can see short presentation about it at www.decisionengine.com.
In the first versions, Bing will focus on four areas:
- Making a purchase decision
- Planning a trip
- Researching a heath condition
- Finding a local business
This new view of search engines is very much about comparing information. People using search engines for finding information are often looking for a one best answer. But decisions are more focused on reviews, trust, location and sometimes filtering out what you don’t need. This is where we see search taking on the role of negotiation. Bing seems to take a first stab at search as a negotiation in each of the four verticals. Bing will be revealing results based on Best Match, Deep Links and Quick Preview to provide relevancy and minimize the need for additional clicks. They will provide customer insight built in pages to provide comparisons, reviews and even price predictors in some cases. Really, the market share is open for improvements.
Bing’s advertising campaign will begin to sell the idea that today’s search engines don’t really work as well as thought to solve problems. Even if this turns out to be a better version of search/decision, they will have to compete with the Google brand. Tests showed people still preferred search results with the Google Brand logo, even if the results were not Google results. Positioning may be their biggest hurdle. Oh yeah… the name?
Branding shop Interbrand helped conceive the name Bing, which was chosen because it was memorable, easy to spell around the world and could be used as a verb, as Microsoft hopes to convert people from "Google it" to "Bing it."
Finding words like that these days "is getting harder and harder," said Paola Norambuena, senior director-head of verbal identity at Interbrand. She added that linguistically Bing had a lot of applications. "It's the sound of found."
from Advertising Age
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