Bing was Live & Live was Dead

Mark Shergold — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:20:47 +0000

Within the search industry, talk is always turning to the fate of MSN and Yahoo in the search engine wars that are dominated by the heavyweight champion of search: Google. Recent attention has focused on MSN with its many management changes and developments, and, in particular, on its newly branded search engine called Bing.

On 3rd June Bing was live and all users redirected from MSN’s previous reinvention of the wheel www.live.co.uk to Bing. So, like the rest of the industry, I have been keen to see what changes MSN has added to the newly branded search engine. The answer is: very little. On the surface you are greeted with a nice picture and generally the same feel as you would get from Live. What’s more, the search results are formatted the same as they were on MSN & Live. So, at this stage, I am a bit puzzled about the reinvention.

Following any new update from the search engine giants, I am always keen to see if there will be any impact on my clients and their search strategies. Recent Google additions, for instance, tend to be pushing hardworking SEO rankings down under maps, products and videos!! After a few searches, I did come across two interesting things.

The One and Only Argos!

Upon searching for Argos, I found that Argos itself was the ONLY advertisement showing. Hopefully, this is just a teething error. When I searched for other big online stores I found the usual lengthy listings. Hopefully this is not part of some bigger plan, otherwise I can here the cries of despair from the Argos affiliates now.

Follow the Yellow Dot

The other addition I found to the listing is a little feature that allows you to see information about the page within the listing. Next to each natural search listing, if you hover over the advert, you see a yellow dot appear. Hover over this dot and it gives you a snippet of information. Is this any use and will people find it? Personally, I don’t see how this will help users choose which listing to click on. Initially it appeared and I could not see how it happened; it took me a few minutes to track down the link again. Case for more effective usability, I think.

To me, Bing just looks like the same old shoes, but with a bit of a polish; it’s certainly one thing I will be keeping an eye on to see what Microsoft has in mind. Personally, I want to see them go after Google and really try to be innovative, but I remember when Microsoft released adcenter and how bad the interface was initially. 2 years on, many of the same issues still exist.

HRO'C Blog » search

Bing was Live & Live was Dead

The One and Only Argos!

Follow the Yellow Dot

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