Bing Watch . . . Just Bing It!

Bing Top-10 Searches in 2009

It was not surprised when Bing put an ad on top of New York City yellow cabs with a picture of Michael Jackson and a short message read: “We will miss you Michael.”   Bing team blog just published a list of top-10 searches topics in 2009 using billions of search queries on Bing decision engine.  On top of the list of topics is a keyword searching for “Michael Jackson” followed by Twitter, and Swine Flu.  Of this top-10 list, six of those were celebrities related searches, including Farrah Fawcett #5, Patrick Swayze #6, Jon and Kate Gosselin #8, Billy Mays #9, and Jaycee Dugard #10 (the missing girl in Lake Tahoe). 

Top-10 Searches Topics:

1. Michael Jackson
2. Twitter
3. Swine Flu
4. Stock Market
5. Farrah Fawcett
6. Patrick Swayze
7. Cash for Clunkers
8. Jon and Kate Gosselin
9. Billy Mays
10. Jaycee Dugard

Bing is getting more love from retail marketers in America

While America's economy is still on a recovery mode, top retailers continue to increase their pay-per-click search spend before this year's Thanks Giving in anticipating of Black Friday big sales day.  A new report published early this week show that online ad spend has increased 7% from one year ago.  The latest study conducted by searchignite.com show that e-retail marketers increased their ad dollars on Bing during the first 45-days of this last Quarter (or, from Oct 1 to Nov 15 '09).  As per the study, Bing saw the largest gain of 47% using year-over-year data.  Bing experienced the largest gain among major search engines.  

Bing + PayPal

As Black Friday is near the corner, Bing Cashback program is now offering $10 for any new users who sign up the program and have an active PayPal account before the end of day of November 25 (Wed). 

When a user makes a purchase of any products thru Bing partners (BestBuy, Dell, Walmart, eBay, etc.) for at least $25, he/she will get $10 back in his/her PayPal account.  According to the Bing website promo, the $10 will be deposited into the user’s PayPal account within 30 days of user’s registration and purchase date.

Click here to sign up

Bing + Yahoo deal is going to be stamped on Wednesday (Dec 2) at 10:00 AM PST in San Francisco

As bloggers and online news outlets have been waiting for since last week's news leak regarding Bing + Yahoo deal.  In the meantime bosses and execs from both sides are busy travelling with families to celebrate Thanks Giving in America this week and will not return to work until at least next Monday (Nov 30).  It’s now believed that the final stamp of approval between the two sides will occur on next Wednesday, December 2, at 10:00 AM PST in San Francisco.   An early note by barrons.com show that “…has invited reporters to a press event to be held 10 a.m. Pacific time next Wednesday in San Francisco.”

Bing News Network (BNN)

Several news sources reported this morning that News Corp, the owner of Wall Street Journal, Fox News, the Sun of the Britain (plus MySpace social networking) has been talking with Bing’s rich parent.  The discussion was about search engines (incl. Bing and Google) need to start paying for content from newspaper industry when those engines indexing the news source.  As ft.com wrote, “Microsoft’s interest is being interpreted as a direct assault on Google because it puts pressure on the search engine to start paying for content.” 

As the search engine wars started this past summer, Bing is trying to capture larger share of the search market in America.  The latest data showing Bing is growing fast, as of October Bing has captured about 10% of search market share in America.  News section is one of the highly visited sites with many repeat users.  News section is also one of the most attractive segments of any search engine.  For Bing side, to gain more users to its News section is tremendous advantage over Google.

Bing Black Friday Deals

Bing cashback program is offering more sweet deals for this year’s black Friday, as reported by Bing team blog.  The great savings will include retailers such as Macy’s, Home Depot, Dell, and others big brands. The sweet deals will allow users to do their holiday shopping online without worrying to wake up in the morning after the big turkey dinner.  According to the blog, more announcements will be coming forward in the next few days, and users were advised to visit Bing Twitter and Facebook for more details.

In-depth analysis of Bing since launch

An interesting reading with a full coverage of Bing since launch was published by redmondmag.com.  The article written by David Barney, suggested that “the key to success lies in maintaining uniqueness” to compete head-to-head with Google, the world leader in search engine.

Bing real-time feature starts showing latest posts from popular news sites

Bing keeps pumping up all kind of new features in the past two weeks.  Without any announcement, Bing just launched an additional feature which highlights the "latest posts" from popular news sites, such as CNN, New York Times, and others.  An example of this feature is when conducting search and type-in “CNN” resulted in a list of the most current or breaking news (see a print screen below).  The new Bing “latest posts” feature shows three latest headlines within the past 60 minutes or few hours.

No more excuses

Kara Swisher of allthingsd.com, the most reliable Silicon Valley news insider, published a short notice early this morning that Bing + Yahoo paperwork is on the bosses’ table and will finally be signed by both parties in the next few days.  Both teams of executives have been very busy handling over 1000-pages paperwork since they posted a delay after passed the deadline on October 27, 2009.  As Kara’s wrote “… [both execs] turn in their deal homework to their bosses for signature by the end of the week…”

Not bad, you can share a room with Bing for a couple of bucks

While Bing continues to gain momentum and capturing search market share in America and the world, Bing’s parent appears to take advantage of Bing popularity to market its infrastructures and services.  During a keynote address at Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, Bob Muglia, president of Server and Tools Business mentioned that Bing has inspired his team in designing of Windows Azure cloud platform.  As reported by eweek.com quoted Mr. Muglia, “Bing is a prime example of Microsoft’s thinking in terms of cloud application models.“    eweek.com continued to wrote as per Mr. Muglia,  “Bing is a service that’s always available; it’s highly resilient; it runs on multiple data centers. If we tried to manage this through standard means, it’d be too expensive…”

As Windows Azure cloud platform has entered its second year, the company will start renting out rooms on its cloud platform for enterprises in the beginning of 2010.  This past summer, Bing parent opened two mega-data centers in Chicago and Dublin (Ireland) which each equals to the size of 16 football fields.  While waiting for Bing to grow up, those excess rooms could be rent it out to generate revenue for the company.

Another Ten: Bing has finally reached almost 10% of search market share in America

Similar to the NASA Atlantis space shuttle that reached outer-space smoothly following the successful blasted-off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday afternoon, Bing has finally reached almost 10% of search market share in America during the month of October, according to a new data provided by comScore as published by techcrunch.com.  Within the five months after launch early June this year, Bing has improved its market share about two points.  The latest features updates, Bing Maps, Bing Mobile, and Bing + Wolfram-Alpha Knowledge Engine will definitely help Bing to maintain its search market share in America and around the world.

According to comScore data, Bing captured about 9.9% of search market share in America in October, compared to September which was at 9.4% (an increase of 0.5%). 

Meanwhile, Google continued to maintain a stable level since May, it captured 65.4% of search market share in America in October, compared to September which was at 64.9% (an increase of 0.5%).  

Bing is expanding its 3% search market share with a full version of the decision engine in Britain

A full version of Bing decision engine is now available for UK users.  The “beta” tag had been removed from the Bing logo.  According to timesonline.co.uk, Bing search market share in UK is about 3% at the moment, while Google controls the majority search.  The full version could help Bing.co.uk to expand into a larger search market share in Europe.

The new UK version has more features than the beta version.  According to Bing team blog, the full version of the decision engine will have the following features:

• British style photograph for Bing popular homepage image
• Visual Search targeting local images
• Instant answer in British English
• Integration with Twitter UK
• Integration with local Shopping
• Bing Maps with updated satellite imageries and local traffic update

The Next Generation of Bing Videos Search

The ex-MSN Video is now dubbed as Bing Videos.  The new site adds integration with popular video site from its rival, YouTube.  It also adds videos links from TV shows, clips, and thrillers from TV.com (CBS), Hulu.com, and many others.  The new site is more organized than its predecessor MSN Video.  The Videos section new looks is as clean as the MSN face-lift which was announced last week.

During the first month after Bing launch, users around the world flocked into Bing Videos to search for content (incl. explicit pornographic materials), mostly due to Bing innovative feature (“autoplay”) which allows users to sneak peak or preview a video without even have to leave the decision engine.

The Arrival of Wolfram Alpha Knowledge Engine

Wolfram|Alpha knowledge engine has finally arrived in Bing decision engine.  The deal between Bing and Wolfram|Alpha was somewhat announced in late August. 

According to Wolfram|Alpha blog, Bing is the first client of this futuristic search engine.  As Wolfram|Alpha blog wrote “I am pleased to share in announcing Microsoft’s Bing decision engine as one of our first API customers.”  The partnership between Bing and Wolfram|Alpha will bring health, nutrition, and advanced math data directly into the decision engine results.

Bing searches market share increased to 9.57% in America

A latest data by Hitwise.com show Bing market share in America’s searches accounted for 9.57% during the period from October 3 to October 31 and using a sample of 10 million users in America.  In September Bing captured only 8.96% of America’s searches, while in August Bing had about 9.48% of all searches. 

 
Based on Hitwise.com data, Google is still a giant, its market share in America’s searches dropped slightly to 70.60%, compared to September which totaled 71.08% of America’s searches, while in August Google commanded about 70.24% of all searches in America.

Bing’s new sauces

While Bing’s sister MSN got a face-lift last week, this week Bing is getting a refresh look with more features.  According to Bing Team blog, there are three important lessons they have learned about the decision engine users during the past six months after launch, such as:

(a) Quicker access to information to make decision easily.
(b) More info is available on a page than just a short blue link when user hovering to the right of a result (Powerset technology).
(c) More focus and get results in shorter time.

As per the team blog, there are several great improvements on the travel section, including easy conducting query and finding instant answer.

Bing + Yahoo deal is on track to the finish line in the first quarter of 2010

While Bing’s boss Mr. Ballmer was concerned with the EU approval few weeks ago, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz told a group of foreign press in Singapore on Tuesday (Nov 10) that the Bing + Yahoo deal is on the right track and should get America’s Justice Department approval sometime in the first quarter of 2010.   As reported by MarketWatch.com quoted Bartz, “There is no delay."  "We expect [the deal] in the first quarter." 

A Good Samaritan or a Fraudster?

Bing’s parent has sent a legal team to tackle a loophole on Bing Cashback, as reported by pcworld.com.  A Cashback member (who coincidently owns a price-comparison website) publicized the error regarding Cashback program (read Bing's cache here).  The member explained the weakness of Cashback system called a tracking pixel, where a fraudster can fake transactions and be eligible to receive Cashback rewards without purchasing anything.

Ad-supported free WiFi access

In its effort to promote the decision engine, Bing partners with JiWire (mobile ads) to offer free WiFi access for users, especially in airports and hotels, as reported by mediapost.com.   JiWire has about 20 million unique users per month, and it requires its users to watch a video or respond to a short survey before enabled them to gain WiFi access.

Dear Santa Bing, all I want for Christmas is an Xbox 360

As we are entering the month of November (about 50 days to Xmas eve) and as a part of this year holiday festivities, there is a new video commercial from Bing.  There will be more videos to pop up in the next few weeks.

The new video shows a Santa with a kid who wanted an Xbox 360 for this year Xmas.  The video was first reported by liveside.net this week.

Watch Santa Bing, click here

Bing + Yahoo International expansion

During a visit to promote new products in Tokyo, Bing boss CEO Steve Ballmer, told a news conference that the Bing + Yahoo 10-years global deal will be expanded into several major markets within the next 12-months.  However, Bing boss warned that they still need a final stamp of approval from America’s Justice Department sometime early 2010.  As reported by reuters.com and quoted Mr. Ballmer, "It's possible that we will extend that partnership (with Yahoo) outside the U.S."  "We will have to wait and see if we can get approval and consummate that partnership inside the U.S. first."

Bing Maps world tour update

Bing Maps released new updates with additional 9,460 square kilometers (approx. 2,337,616.9 acres) of new images early this week, as reported by Bing team.  The new images include America, Canada, and Britain.  New imagery is now available for city such as Vancouver, Canada.  A guided tour is provided for the new release by the Bing team at Bing Maps World Tour (we tried this link, somehow it didn’t work properly).

Bing’s sister has a plastic surgery

Bing’s sister, the famous MSN web portal, just received a face-lift to attract new generation of users from Bing decision engine.  The new website has less blue background to save printing cost.  The new site also has a newly redesigned butterfly logo.  The "msn" (lower case) letter uses a similar typography as Bing.

The top part of the new site has a slide show of five popular stories of the day with photos and news headlines.  The new color scheme is simpler with white background.  The homepage has Live ID login to access Hotmail emails.  The Live ID login is also tied into Windows Live, Twitter, and Facebook accounts.

(1) NEW FACE

(2) OLD FACE

 

Storm2Bing

As Bing is on fast track to dominate mobile web in America and International market with a new updated site at m.bing.com for touch screen phones, Bing is working closely with Verizon to launch its mobile app into BlackBerry Storm1 and Storm2. 

A new BlackBerry Storm2 is now on sale in America’s smartphone market with preloaded Bing search app.  The preloaded Bing app in BlackBerry Storm2 is the result of a previously signed deal between Bing’s parent and Verizon which many reports believed worth about $500 million.  The deal is to install Bing app as the default decision engine on Verizon's handsets. 

The new Bing mobile app equips with such as voice recognition search, local maps and driving directions, traffic updates for large cities, and local search (restaurant, events).

Bing at par

Bing market share was at par in October 2009, as reported by StatCounter.  As per the latest data by StatCounter, Bing captured about 8.86% of America search market share in October, compared to September at 8.51% (an increase of 0.35%)

Google also saw its America search market share increased slightly to 80.39%, compared to September at 80.08% (an increase of 0.31%).

When it compared the traffic data to one year ago, Bing (formerly LiveSearch) held only about 5.23% of America search market share in October 2008 (an increase of 3.63%).

The latest StatCounter report was collected from 5.1 billion search engine referring clicks worldwide, where 1.27 billion (24.9%) were from American users.  StatCounter network has more than three million websites.