What’s Bing Up To?

“And Bing - here it is!”  This is how bing.com introduces itself on its welcome page.  Will it help you, as an internet marketer, make money online?

What Is Bing?

bing.com is a search-engine, but, certainly in the creators opinion, it’s a very different type of search engine.  Bing is actually the brainchild of Microsoft and is the new version of Live Search, and their promotional copy says that “the truth is, you’ve evovled. It’s time search caught up”.  While this really doesn’t say anything (a bit like “time for change”) they do go on to tell us a little about HOW the new search engine works.

What’s New?

Their approach is aimed at improving search-engine results by building a “decision engine” rather than a standard listing of indexed results. They promise a new set of intuitive tools, and a faster (than Live Search) results list.  They also promise more”organized” SERPs (search engine results pages), however,they don’t say more organized that WHAT. As you see in a minute, not MUCH really is new.

What Else?

They also offer something called “Cashback” where you can actually get small refunds on products, and something else they call “Price Predictor”, which is meant to be able to help you buy things like flight tickets at the best price.  Maybe they’re working with Priceline or some similar company, but the results that you get are very good indeed.

Interface

Their main search categories are:

1. EXPLORE
2. Images
3. Videos
4. Shopping
5. News
6. Maps
7. Travel

Sound familiar?  Well, it’s missing mail of course, but from the outset, it looks a lot like Google, right!?  The interface IS a lot prettier than Google or any of the others, but will it deliver what people are looking for?  Probably yes, but then, so do the OTHER search engines. I do like the Travel category, because it does what the likes of Orbitz and Expedia does in that it shows all the major airlines flights available. It also shows sponsored links on the right hand side, just like if you were on the regular search-results pages.

There’s an overview of bing.com available here.

Will It Be Better Than Google?

Well, the people at Google have had ALMOST a monopoloy on search for the past 10 years or so, but for good reasons.  They are very clever at understanding what people are looking for when they type in a search-term, and they also know how to monetize their engine by offering more services than all of the other search-engines combined.

While Google can’t (can it?) possibly be the leading search-engine market forever, their branding has been so powerful that only a totally new way of sifting the trillions of pieces of information out there can possibly topple them from their top-slot.  I think it WILL happen, but not for many years to come.

As an internet marketer, Google still currently offers many more tools to help you make money online, and I certainly won’t be changing any time soon.

All things considered, I like Bing………but then, I like Google more.  Let’s see how Microsoft steps up to the plate in the years ahead.  Bing doesn’t seem very innovative, rather more like a the pretty daughter of an good looking movie star.

Luke.