Bing is undoubtedly a good looking product with some nice features (will review in detail in a future GET CONNECTED column) and it does seem to run reasonably fast (on my ageing laptop anyway) so I am thinking finally we might be getting some true competition in the marketplace and that has got to be good, right?
Although understandably launching in the US first, a colleague assures me Bing will be up and running in this country within six months at most, although nothing is official at this stage.
And, despite all the buzz in the media about the coupling of these two giants of the ITC industry, it is clear the new tool faces a competitor that has embedded itself into the very psyche of the majority of web users and has a boat-load of cash stashed in its vaults to bankroll the much anticipated clash of the titans.
As part of my job I spend a lot of time talking to lots of people, about search – usually local search - and it seems clear to me the average web surfer ‘loves’ Google and everything about it. What’s more, you can certainly bet most of them would not even wish to consider life on the web without the ubiquitous search engine being there to lend a helping hand.
Based on my personal research findings many of these same people think they have no real options, when questioned, although the fact is that Yahoo7, and MSN Live to a lesser extent, have been able to offer comparable search results for years. And that’s ignoring the likes of more refined search tools such as Ask Jeeves and Dogpile.
Google is reputed to have about 65 per cent of all search traffic world-wide but here in Australia the figure is even higher which underlines the close connection and affinity many local users have with this tool.
Whether the arranged ‘marriage’ between Bill Gates’s software monolith and the previously hesitant internet veteran Jerry Yang’s ‘baby’ will deliver a truly competitive search tool, seriously capable of grabbing market-share from the Mountainview boys, is debatable.
Having said that, it was always going to happen, but only time will tell if the increased competition and massive marketing muscle will eventually translate into improved search results for the average user. No doubt, whatever the final outcome, it will become a Case Study for Competitive Strategy 101 in the years to come.
I have in fact tried Bing. But only to check out its performance locating some keywords we are currently running in SMARTPAGES PPK trial campaigns e.g. ‘abrasive blasting wollongong’, ‘term deposits sutherland’ or ‘designer glasses shellharbour’.
Note: In case you wondered, when searching all keywords are treated as not being capitalized and joining words etc are ignored.
Anyway, for these particular ‘localised’ searches, there is a major problem because the results being served to the search engine results page (SERP) are only the SMARTPAGES directory ‘category level’ documents, i.e. they do not drill down to the actual file being searched. This means users will always have to click a further time to reach their ultimate destination.
Frankly, I don’t think many users will cop this. To my mind people are far too busy and if they already get this type of functionality now I firmly believe it will be a prerequisite before a significant number of users will even contemplate a permanent move away from the ‘do no evil’ guys from Stanford.
What’s more, they shouldn’t have to, considering Yahoo7 and MSN Live were both delivering this well before the new kid on the block, Bing, arrived so I would suggest they definitely know how to fix this particular bug, and should do so without delay.
Of course this problem may only effect local searches and be an isolated example but it does start to make you wonder (considering it was such a small trial): is this bug the tip of the iceberg?
Let’s hope not. | 
