We all know that competition between the major search engines is fierce. And it’s apparent that it’s only about to become even more competitive out there in the very near future. Here’s what’s going on right now...
Microsoft’s failed attempt to purchase Yahoo! has led them to further enhance their web search strategy. The result is a new and improved search engine called Bing—which is being touted by the company as being not just a search engine, but a “decision engine.”
It was obvious from the start that they used many of the key features of Google and attempted to build upon them. I began with a search on Iran (as that seems to be one of the top stories these days). A search on Bing led me to a well laid out search engine results page (SERP) with current news from 23 minutes ago at the top of the page.
The SERP is broken down into groups such as 6 results for news, 3 results for maps, history, culture, government, and economy respectively. At the bottom of the page, there is a separate section for images and videos. At the end of each grouping, there is a “see more results” icon if you require more results in that area.
At first I thought, wow, that’s going to make it tougher to get a site listed on the first page of results on an initial search…a consistent top 3 for all keywords! So I performed a search on the on a different non-news niche and received a SERP much like Google’s results.
Whew! Depending on your niche, nothing appears to be all that much different after all.
Bing does have a novel approach for providing relevancy to the search results. To the right of each link, you can hover over an icon and obtain an overview of the page without clicking through. It basically provides you with the first paragraph of the article. This will make it doubly important to make sure your first paragraph is an attention grabber.
As of now, it looks like Bing has already surpassed Yahoo to become the number two search engine provider in only the first few weeks of its launch. Whether this is just the novelty of a new toy on the market remains to be seen.
Stay tuned to the WSpider blog and we’ll keep you up to date with everything you should know about the changing face of the search engine industry—looks like it’s going to be a wild ride!
