Given the recent progress made with the development of Bing in the UK, it's only fair that we spent some time taking the product for a spin and reminding folks about the opportunity we see in the Search space here at Search Engine Strategies London 2010.
Peter Maxmin, the Director for Online and Bing Search in EMEA for Microsoft, framed his presentation around why Microsoft is pursuing the Search challenge and what the consumer frustrations currently are with the search experience. He also finished by giving us a demo of some very exciting and new Bing features.
Many may ask Microsoft "why bother?" when it comes to competing in Search. This presentation gave us a very good picture of the UK market opportunity where Bing currently commands an audience of 17.3m users, but where its query share comes in at 3%. These figures present Microsoft with the challenge to raise user engagement with the product and increase queries per user. Peter indicated that we are in a great position to meet this challenge head-on given our technical and investment capabilities. The Search Technology Centers in London, Paris and Munich continue to create market-specific Search experiences that are winning favour with consumers and the press alike!
Here are two of the eye-opening statistics shared in this session.
- 1 in 3 queries are navigational
- only 1 in 4 queries deliver successful results!
Since Search wasn't specifically built to help people accomplish tasks, research from Microsoft indicates that search sessions across all engines are often long and repetitive. This was a nice segue into some of the improvements made recently to Bing.
The UK Bing hompage is an aesthetically different experience to all other engines. Check out today's Winter Olympics image. You can also use the hotspots located on the image to help you learn about Bing features and navigate around the photo subject matter.
Another editorially-driven feature of Bing is instant answers. Try typing "arsenal football club" into Bing for example. This definitely goes beyond the 10 blue links model. There is a Best Match, categorised search results and information about the recent and upcoming Arsenal fixtures.
One of the key tasks performed everyday have local intent. The Bing Maps demo showed how to find rich imagery and local business information for that area. Peter demonstrated how to easily find a restaurant near the London Eye and book it in a few simple clicks. Click here to see how he did this.
For me, the most exciting demo of the day was the showcasing of Streetside and Photosynth in Bing Maps. Search for "shangri la hotel vancouver" and experience it for yourself.
View the Photosynth of the Statue of Liberty in New York.
Did you know that people can process visual information 27% faster than textual information? Built in Silverlight, Visual Search offers an exciting new way to search using visual imagery.
These innovative features keep on coming with Bing and it encouragingly moves Search away from the old traditional 10 blue links model. Stay tuned for yet more cool features in the near future.
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Read all our posts about SES London too.
Colm