Tackling search overload in the UK
Whilst the internet has drastically grown in depth and complexity over the last decade, search engines had not followed the same evolution, leaving users with ten blue links to find their way in this always more complex maze. But in June, Microsoft launched Bing, a faster way to make more informed choices.
In the UK, Bing was launched under Beta, a tag we promised to remove only once our experience would differ from the competition and outperform them in terms of UK relevancy.
On November 12th, we reached this aggressive objective thanks to our London-based Search Technology Centre.
These 60 engineers, based in Soho, have done an in-depth job at localising Bing global experience for British users in just 5 months. Under Jordi Ribas' direction, the team has crunched historical algorithmic results to identify local intents and integrated them into Bing unique categorised search.
They worked with local partners to enrich the search results with highly relevant information that could address consumer passion points. For instance, thanks to a partnership with TopTable, searching Bing for a restaurant in Hammersmith will provide you with restaurant ratings and one-click booking option.
Into football?
Type your favourite Premiership team and Bing provides you with an Instant Answer with the latest fixtures thanks to SkySports.
Interested in celebrities?
The Twitter integration announced earlier enables you to keep pace with the latest gossips of your local heroes.
But the engineers did not stop there. They also enriched the index with UK URLs and taught the algorithm how to cope with information such as partial postcodes, local abbreviations and acronyms, common British misspelling and alterations, etc.
This results in a better understanding of the semantic context of queries.
Time to go mass.
As a result of this intensive work, Bing is now out of beta and already helps British users make more informed choices.
This milestone is key for advertisers too.
Richer, better organised results helping consumer accomplish key tasks. Ultimately Bing helps consumers refine their intent and provides advertisers with a more engaged and qualified traffic. Combined with adCenter unique targeting capabilities, Bing ensures the right consumer is delivered the right advertising message, what reduces 'wasted clicks'.
The latest Nielsen NetRatings results have confirmed the superior quality of Bing's traffic over the competition.
In the UK, searchers clicking through to a site from Bing are 25% more engaged than the average searcher, and 50% more likely to convert when on that site. And this qualitative statement comes along with another great news: Bing's British user base is growing (even without any mass marketing support). 35% more people used Bing in August than used Live Search in August '08.
With a product now ready and a naturally growing momentum, it was time to increase Bing public exposure and accelerate its market penetration. You will shortly see, and hear, more of our new search experience in the mass media in the coming days.
This consumer outreach will combine brand building and education to highlight to consumers Bing unique selling proposition.
All that just in time for the seasonal peak.
Thanks
Cedric