On May 28, 2009 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduced the digital world to their new incarnation of its search technology, Bing. All web users had access to Bing on June 3, 2009. Why did Microsoft change the search engine and how does that effect the search engine ranking your company already has achieved? Will your keyword ranking lose ranking?
The initial answer is quite easy to answer. Microsoft is desperate to grasp some of the market share that Google now has. Do the names Magellan, Open Text, Info Seek, Snap and Direct Hit sound familiar? These are all Search engines that Google has gobbled up in the last decade. In 2006 the market share for Google and Live Search were 49.2% and 9.6% respectively. At the time of Bings onset the market share of Google had grown to 72.4% and Live Search had fallen to just 6.3%. With the Google share so large and not slowing down, Microsoft had to make some changes to their search engine offering.
The second question is not so easily answered. At first glance, the rankings you and your SEO provider have achieved should not be affected. Some features of the new Bing are innovative and could garner an ease of use which could be beneficial to your website visitors. One main difference is the fact that Microsoft calls their latest endeavor a decision engine not a search engine. The main reason for the title alteration is that Bing is supposed to assist the user in making decisions by delivering the best results, presented in a more organized way to simplify key tasks and actually help you make decisions faster. There are features such as cash back on great products, and Price Predictor, which will tell the user when to buy an airline ticket in order to help get you the lowest. Bing will also offer compare and contrast features so your customer will be able to compare your product, price and shipping requirements against others. It could be wonderful for your business to have such features at the tip of the users fingers. A primary goal of all websites is for the consumer to make a wise choice|smart decision (the decision to buy) at a fast pace. Bing promises to do just that.
Something else to keep in mind is that Microsoft plans on spending between $80 million and $100 million promoting Bing. These numbers represent almost one quarter of their yearly advertising budget. This immense amount of advertising can only help all of those websites ranked on Bing. High rankings should translate into sales. It is like getting free advertising. Your SEO company should work very hard in the next year to increase your standings on Bing so you can take advantage of this advertising push.
Microsoft reports that your websites rankings may fluctuate a bit at first. They say that the rankings will stabilize in a short while. Since the searches are going to be more refined and narrowed, it is believed that URLs with hyphen separated words will have an initial advantage. But it is too early to analyze the results. We can only go by what Microsoft is telling us at this time.
Should you consider changing your SEO optimization strategy? It is always a good idea to speak with your professional, but at this time, probably not. Remember how small Bing’s percentage of the total search engine really is. A month into its launch, Bing’s share has grown to 8.23% of all searches. While this is not a great number, the upward trend can only help those websites rank well on Bing. Microsoft’s Bing has come quite far in a short amount of time. Last year the term that was searched the most|the most commonly searched term on Live Search was Google. After it had been unveiled, Steve Wozniak, the Apple co-founder called Bing astounding. All the speculation can only improve web traffic and hopefully improve web sales.
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July 29th, 2009 
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